


Repeating Apologies

by Caspinn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Mark of Cain Cure, Sisters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-09-23 20:45:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9675809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caspinn/pseuds/Caspinn
Summary: When the Winchester brothers discover that they need to find a soul mate to get rid of Dean's Mark of Cain, they discover a species unknown by humanity.A species, created to purify humanity. You can fill in for yourself if that sounds like good news or bad news.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, it's been at least 4 years since I've written something in English. That's why I want to thank my awesome friend, Emma, to correct my spelling. She has the talent to see all the flaws in my writing and knows exactly how she has to tackle them. 
> 
> Of course Emma isn't a robot, so if you read something strange or incorrect, just let me know!
> 
> It's also my first time writing fanfiction on my own and I am very excited. If you want to react, please do and don't be afraid to be honest ;)

“Just cut it out, Sam!” Dean shouted.

He was pissed off. _Really_ pissed off, because he had the feeling that Sam was doing some dumb – _very_ dumb – shit just to get rid of the Mark. That goddamn Mark that had been poisoning Dean’s mind ever since he got it.

Dean had noticed Sam’s weird and mysterious behavior a little while ago. It was quite obvious, too; how Sam always seemed to sneak away whenever he got a phone call, how he always gave Dean that look like he was some wild animal that could burst into flames as soon as it got mad, how he never had a good explanation for random leaving the house, instead coming up with those horrible excuses like going to see a freaking French movie in a whole other state…

Yeah, no, Dean wasn’t stupid. He knew his brother well enough to know that Sam probably was working on some kind of dumb shit, just to save him from the Mark.

Sam was looking at Dean like some beaten puppy when suddenly his cell phone started ringing – again. The device was on the table, buzzing around and begging for their attention… right in Dean’s freaking eyesight! But this time, he would figure out who this person was!

Dean cast a quick glance at the screen and found himself frowning when he recognized the name written there. At that moment, Sam probably already knew that Dean would find out the truth about these plans of saving his brother, because Sam knew who was calling – of course he did, that little shit.

When Dean looked up, his stare was hard, boiling. Probably able to murder somebody with it if it was possible.

“CAS?!” He shouted at his little brother. There was no more use in trying to find another stupid excuse now since Cas normally only called Dean whenever he needed something. Yeah, no, Dean had enough here to make his own conclusions, and now Sam could only watch when Dean picked up the phone.

Almost automatically, Dean puts the phone on speaker, and together they hear Cas on the other side of the line.

“ _Sam?_ ” the low voice of the Angel asks. Dean kept staring at Sam when he answered.

“Cas, what the hell are you doing?” Cas squeaked softly and cleared his throat.

“ _J-just testing my new phone, Dean_ ,” Cas starts with another shitty excuse. “ _Didn’t want to bother you with that, heh_.”

Deans eyebrows jumped up by hearing Cas lie like that; not that Cas hadn’t lied to them before, Dean told himself while thinking back of that whole Crowley-business. “You’re a horrible liar, Cas,” he said dryly. Seriously, how did he ever even manage to lie to Sam and Dean for a whole freaking year?

Sam was just standing there the entire time, looking at his annoyed brother who was getting even more annoyed since nobody seemed to be going to tell him what was they were planning – behind his _freaking_ back! Again!

Dean knew that he had given up hope, and it was obvious that that Sam hadn’t. But that didn’t give him the right to lie to him like that. They did this dance over and over again, and somebody always ended up mad or disappointed again, too angry to talk to the other. Sam lied a lot to Dean and he lied about this whole project the whole time.

Something seemed to have shifted inside of Sam while Dean continued to get some answers out of Cas. The guilty, beaten look that he had been carrying just a few seconds ago was now gone, and instead he seemed… defeated?

“ _Dean, I really don’t-_ “ Cas kept on going, but then Sam interrupted him.

“Just tell him already, Cas,” Sam mumbled. Dean’s heart jumped a bit there. _Finally_ , they seemed to be getting somewhere. Cas hesitated for a few more seconds, but he sounded actually glad he could finally tell the truth to Dean. The Angel seemed to hate working behind one of the brother’s back, so this would probably be a real relief for him.

Cas sighed and started talking at last, Dean knowing with just the sound of his voice that the Angel is smiling. “ _Rowena found something._ ”

Deans eyes widened when he heard Rowena’s name, and anger boiled up inside of him again. That witch? Crowley’s mother? Who actually _tried_ to kill him but failed miserably? Dean kept himself in and didn’t say anything, instead waiting for the rest despite feeling like he was very close to losing control again. On the other side of the line someone beeped something on the background.

“ _Okay, Rowena and Charlie found something together_ ,” Cas quickly corrected himself. Dean’s eyes widened even more and his mouth dropped open. Then he blinked and stared furiously at his younger brother next to him. Charlie? Innocent, sweet Charlie, who really didn’t have to keep on risking her neck for their cause? Oh man, this was getting worse by the second.

Someone spoke again in the background. “ _Fine, Charlie did the most work_ ,” Cas eventually corrected for the last time. Someone else spoke in the background, words Dean couldn’t understand. “ _I’m not a boy, Rowena. I’m clearly a full grown man_.”

“Cas, focus and tell us what they’ve discovered, please?’ Sam asked calmly, but Dean knew that he was impatient at the moment.

“ _Yeah, uhm, so they are still researching for more information, but we need to start looking for Dean’s soul mate_ ,” Cas said it like searching for a soul mate was something ordinary, to be found easily in the store, hopefully with lots of discount. Dean was so taken aback that he had to put the phone on the table before it could drop on the ground. Sam watched his brother silently freak out a little.

“Like what, he needs to fall in love or something?” Sam asked the question Dean had been avoiding there.

“ _Uh, what? Of course not,_ ” Cas muttered as if the ‘you idiot’ at the end of the sentence was implied, sounding like he didn’t understand how Sam could even be thinking this. “ _I said he needs to find his soul mate_.”

“Repeating it doesn’t make it sound more logic, Cas!” Sam responded bitterly.

“ _Oh, you don’t know what soul mates really are?”_ Cas asked. Sure, the Angel had infinite knowledge about all this shit, and to him it was probably common knowledge like knowing the days of the week. “ _A soul mate is someone who is literally linked to somebody’s soul, Sam. That doesn’t necessarily mean something positive. Finding Dean’s soulmate doesn’t mean that he will fall in love with him or her. There are a lot of soulmates that are just friends. There are also a lot that are enemies and end up killing each other because the connection is strong but filled with negative energy, you see. Most soul mates never even meet._ ”

“Great,” growled Dean. “So we have to search someone, somewhere. That doesn’t sound vague at all…”

“Come on, Dean! This is great news; we just have to find this person, how innocent does that sound? It’s not like you have to kill your own brother or something, we just have to find him…or her, whatever.” It had probably been a long time, but Sam seemed finally hopeful that things would go back as they were before the Mark came along.

“Yeah,’ Dean sighed, and the happiness he saw on his brothers face calmed him down. “Sounds almost too good to be true…”

“ _Dean’s right, Sam.  I don’t really see how the Mark will just go away when we find Dean’s soul mate_.” Cas sounded doubtful “ _They didn’t decode the rest of the book yet. The only part they solved was that we have to find the soulmate, nobody knows what we have to do after that_.”

“Right, I understand,’ Sam answered while passing his hand through his hair. He seemed to think for a second and then asked: “Can Rowena find out who this soulmate is?”

Suddenly they heard someone curse very loudly through the speaker and then, when she was finally done with cursing, Rowena started yelling. “ _I’M A WITCH, YE BIGOT! NOT SOME KIND OF HUMAN PSYCHIC, I’M NO’ GOING TO LOWER MYSELF TO THAT! FIND ONE OF THESE WEIRD AURAREADERS OR THESE FORTUNETELLERS OR SOMETHING!”_ Her words were covered with that typical thick Scottish accent.

“ _I don’t think she can see who Dean’s soul mate is_ ,” Cas unnecessary added to that. Dean couldn’t help but roll his eyes there.

“Yeah, no shit,” Dean muttered to himself. Sam ignored him. 

“Okay, Cas, keep on searching for more answers about this solution. Give Charlie a big hug from us and tell that she can come to the bunker if she wants to work somewhere else. Oh, and Rowena should be imprisoned here now, I guess, since Dean now knows, so… .”

“ _Of course,”_ Cas said shortly, like he always did. When the Angel hung up, Sam was already making plans to take action.

“So, Dean, I’ll search trough Bobby’s books, you can shift through dad’s journal and see if you can find something. We need to find a psychic asap.” When he looked at Dean at last, his expression changed. Dean knew he looked worn, obviously worrying. But Dean couldn’t help it, so much seemed to be happening in such a short time. “What’s wrong?”

“This doesn’t feel right, Sammy,” Dean started. “We don’t know any details; who even knows what we have to do to… my freaking _soul mate_?”

Sam nodded in understanding, probably worrying about that too – who wouldn’t? Dean knew he only wanted to make him hopeful again. He had made clear from the beginning that he didn’t want Dean to stop fighting the Mark, but Dean _had_ just given up when there didn’t seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel.

“I don’t think we can hurt your soul mate by just an introduction?” Sam tried, chuckling a bit. Dean snorted as well, and then nodded. The worried frown stayed on his face, still. Dean couldn’t really remember what it felt like to actually be happy, to smile without forcing it. All he had been feeling for so long was anger and worry, constantly concentrating on keeping things together and keeping the urge to murder deep inside.

“We’ll start tomorrow. You should get some sleep because you look like shit, you sneaky bitch,” Dean said with a little, forced smile. Dean was trying the best he could not to be too angry with him for lying and keeping secrets. The mark made this effort very hard for Dean, so Sam better appreciated every effort he put into it.

Sam then gave Dean the kindest smile he had and said: “You too, jerk!”


	2. Chapter 2

“Poor Charlie, babysitting the witch…” Cas mumbled quietly from his place in the backseat.  


“Yeah, well, someone needed to stay with that witch. We can’t leave Rowena locked up without a guard,” Sam answered. “And besides, she’ll manage, she’s badass.” The hunter then took a sip from the fresh smoothie he made himself that morning. They had been on the road for a few hours already, but so far it’s only been quiet. Dean hadn’t said much yet ever since they left, and he had been clenching his jaw from that moment – it’s a wonder it wasn’t hurting yet.  


To say that he had a rough morning was an understatement.  


He was really doing his best not to be angry or irritated by anything Sam and Cas said, which was probably why the other two mostly kept quiet. Not that they usually talked about annoying or boring stuff, of course! Dean just had one of these mornings where only the sound of their voices would drive him mad.  


The oldest brother had been biting his tongue for some hours now, and they still were another day’s ride away from the psychics called Rose and Violet. Sam had found their number in one of Uncle Bobby’s old books and he had immediately checked if the two ladies were still alive – one can never be too sure in this sort of life, after all – by calling them up. According to him, the two ladies sounded very glad – though unsurprised – that they could help the Winchesters. Despite better judgement, the two brothers and the angel quickly jumped in the Impala and hit the road.  


“This smells fishy,” Dean finally said, staring at the road in front of him. After all these hours of silence, Dean was a bit surprised that he actually managed to get a sound out of his mouth.  


“Oh, I really thought I bought the tacos with chicken this time? These damn fish tacos,” Castiel responded in confusion, looking at his own hands as if they had betrayed him.  


“No, no!” Sam quickly countered. “You bought the right ones, Cas! Dean is talking about the psychics.” Sam couldn’t help but smile at Cas’ naivety, though. Dean’s frown only went harder and his knuckles turned white from squeezing the steering wheel.  


Dean felt a sort of pain. It wasn’t physical, but rather mental. But, at the same time, it also felt like heartache, because Dean knew that he normally would have laughed with Cas’ bluntness if he didn’t have that stupid piece of scar on his arm.  


Without the Mark, he would never have gotten so irritated by the Angel’s confusion. But, no, irritated was even too innocent to describe what Dean was feeling. Instead, his hands were itching to punch someone right in the face. If Cas wouldn’t be careful, Dean’s best friend would become the unnecessary victim.  


And thinking about these kinds of things made Dean even more pissed off. No, he had to keep driving. He had to clear his head; thinking too much was already too much of a provocation to him.  


When Dean saw the sign of a gas station that was nearby, it took all of his effort to get himself to the building slowly showing up. His jaw was still clenched shut, teeth strongly pressed together to keep himself from raging against his brother and best friend.  


Once he pulled over, a short growl escaped from his lips as he aggressively announced that he needed a break. After that, he slammed his door shut, and took wide steps away from the car. He was glad Sam didn’t ask any questions, but it wasn’t like Dean gave him the chance to do that, anyway. After a while, Dean stopped his little, slow walk around the big gas station, and he took a seat on a block of concrete.  


They continued their drive about half an hour later. Sam apparently had gotten inside the gas station to get some food for them, but Dean quickly found that he wasn’t hungry.  


After driving a grand total of 20 hours, Dean should have been relieved to enter Blackstone. But he didn’t feel it.  


“Do you really think this is the right house?” Dean asked, being suspicious as he looked the yellow cottage over, seeing it surrounded with thousands of pink and red flowers and bushes in the front yard.  


“Well, uh, the address is right?” Sam responded, though not sounding certain at all. He, too, was looking at the house just like Dean. It definitely was the ‘loudest’ and most ‘notable’ building of the street, maybe even of the entire town. The mailbox was shaped like a cat and on their way to the front door the three men saw a whole collection of very white animal sculptures.  


The doorbell looked like a little fairy and it made the sound of a cuckoo bird when Sam pressed the button. The three guys waited a few minutes before they heard someone opening the locks. When the door opened, they saw two old women smiling at them.  


Dean stood behind Cas and Sam, trying to keep his annoyed scowl away as much as possible.  


“Hi, uhm, Rose and Violet?” Sam asked politely.  


“Yes, I’m Rose and-“  


“I’m Violet.” The two old ladies didn’t have any differences to identify one or another with. Dean scoffed softly so nobody but Cas heard. He couldn’t help it, especially when the ladies started finishing each other’s sentences.  


The two elder ladies signaled that the guys should follow them into their house by waving with their hands… together of course.  


“We’re Sam and Dean Winchester and this is our loyal friend, Castiel,” Sam said to introduce themselves while walking through the hallway. Dean wondered if the introduction wasn’t unnecessary.  


The wallpaper looked like an explosion of flowers and everywhere Dean looked, he saw all kinds of mirrors. Small ones, big bombastic ones. More of them were just laying on little decorative tables.  


“Oh an angel in our midst, how exciting!” one of the two replied. This answer raised a lot of eyebrows, because how could they know? Dean didn’t recall Sam introducing Cas as an Angel?  


“That’s smart,” Cas suddenly said from behind Dean, and the hunter and his brother both turned around to see Cas staring at an old photograph hanging against the wall. It seemed like it was one of the first colored pictures that was ever made, and Dean noticed two young ladies on it, one with bright pink hair and the other with purple. “Coloring your hair in the color your names describe.”  


Dean snorted, wondering what exactly Cas described as ‘smart’ here. One of the old ladies walked closer and took a quick look at the picture before laughing as well.  


“Oh, no silly! Rose had purple hair, I had pink hair! We didn’t want to be too obvious!” the woman – Dean suspected it was Violet – answered. Then she grabbed him by the arm and pulled him along to where her sister was. The brothers silently followed behind them.  


They led the boys to their living room. This room was less bombastic, but there were still vases with big flowers and mirrors everywhere.  


“Take a seat, boys!” the other one – probably Rose – said happily, so the three men sat down in a huge, soft but comfortable sofa.  


“Haha, you’re a giant, wow! You almost make our sofa look small!” Rose, Dean guessed, laughed at Sam while the other one, Violet, disappeared in the kitchen. Sam gave them a little smile for the joke he had probably already heard a thousand times.  


“Here’s some pie,” Violet said when she came back from the kitchen with a tasty-looking pie with all kinds of fruits on it.  


Sam took a piece out of civility. Dean simply shook his head when they offered him one wich made Cas look at him with that annoying sad look. True, pie was sacred no matter what form it came in, but Dean simply didn’t feel hungry at the time.  


The two grannies sat down in the sofa in front of the guys. There was a little glass coffee table in between them, and on that were two small mirrors, about the size of a standard sheet of paper.  


“So, Winchester brothers, you are looking for a soul mate?” Violet asked. The two ladies sure didn’t mince around. “Will you give us your hand, dear boy?” The women were both reaching out for Dean with their arms hovering over the table. Dean quickly looked at Sam and Cas when he laid his hands in the palms of the two women.  


“Before we begin-“  


“-we want you to know how we will proceed.”  


“Now we’re adjusting-“  


“-to your weird energy. After that we’ll-“  


“-start to focus and some things, signs or words we’ll see-“  


“-we’ll write down on the mirror.”  


So they used there mirrors for their sessions; that explained why the house was filled with them. Dean frowned a bit more, mostly because of the headache he was getting with the two women constantly finishing each other’s sentences.  


“But, why mirrors?” Sam asked curiously. The two ladies smiled at the younger brother while still holding on to Dean’s hands. Dean, in turn, was starting to feel uncomfortable with that.  


“Because mirrors open possibilities, worlds, dimensions…” Violet answered dreamily. “Hush now, it’s time!” And the two ladies closed their eyes. When Sam looked at Dean, Dean mouthed the word ‘vague’. Sam nodded, seeming just as puzzled as Dean was feeling.  


Dean felt really uneasy and hoped his hands wouldn’t start sweating. The two ladies were dead silent. Dean didn’t want to interrupt them, he started counting the flowers in the living room. When he counted 21 tulips, 4 lilies and 17 roses, his headache got even stronger, and it got more and more intense until Dean almost pulled out his hands to press them against his forehead.  


The moment the pain seemed to be getting too much, he saw a thick blackness. The whole room disappeared around him. Sam and Cas were no longer there, just gone. Through the blackness he felt… impressions? Very, very negative impressions and emotions.  


It was too much at the same time, like Dean had stumbled in a thick black wave. And that was when he started seeing glimpses trough the dark cloud he was currently in. Dean shockingly broke out of this weird and extremely uncomfortable trance by pulling his hands back as quick as like they were being held in fire. Rose and Violet opened their eyes and looked shocked at Dean.  


“You saw it as well?” Rose asked in utter surprise and confusion. Dean nodded while he rubbed his eyes. The other woman then hummed next to her sister.  


“It must be a very strong connection then,” Violet clarified to herself. Then she looked at Dean. “We can’t assure that what you will see will be pleasant. Are you sure you still want to do this?”  


Well, Dean didn’t come all this way to stop a reading because of a little complication as stupid as the freaking weird and sick vibes and impressions he got from it. Sam looked at Dean and seemed to understand that Dean didn’t like the little experience he just had in his head. It was clear now that he wasn’t going to like the whole experience of the reading at all, mildly said. Still, Dean nodded again and laid his hands back in the ladies’ hands.  


For Sam and Cas, it was probably quite nerve-wrecking. They could only watch the three of them turning white, looking shocked, desperate and angry. All they could do was wait until Dean and the two sisters opened their eyes.  


At first, they nothing, instead only felt certain emotions, impressions. This wasn’t what usually happened when they start their reading, Dean felt one of the sisters think inside his head. But the two women seemed to know that their profession wasn’t really predictable. They felt like something negative and heavy started running through their veins and they started seeing glimpses through the blackness.  


At that moment the negative feeling split in two… no wait, three? Dean couldn't really do anything but watch as Rose and Violet followed three strains of impressions which seemed extremely hard. He was also aware that his headache was returning. They had to hurry.  


One of the strains felt panicked when Rose wanted to focus on it. Dean felt the trouble she had to go through to get to it, and he almost thought she’d get a panic attack. Rose finally saw something, revealing it to Dean as well since Dean saw everything she saw  


Before Dean really understood it, Dean found himself looking through somebody else’s eyes, staring at his own hands. Much to his surprise, the person whose head he was currently in seemed to have his hands strongly holding another man by the shoulders. The man’s face was covered with blood, and so were his fingers – which were desperately trying to pull Dean’s hands away from his body. The man seemed to be shivering. The strongest emotion Dean felt was anger, especially when, for a short few seconds, his gaze passes over the lifeless body lying on the floor.  


Much to his surprise, he saw one of the steady hands reaching for the other person’s head. It wasn’t anything new to him when his fingers touched the man’s forehead. He had seen Cas do that multiple times before. So he wasn’t surprised when he saw the eyes of the man turning into bright lights. Dean expected the man to fall down, dead. But instead the vision suddenly was shut down with a shock. Dean never saw what happened, did the man die or not? He probably did.  


What he hadn’t been expecting was the strong feeling of disgust and fear coming from the psychic woman he was travelling with. Right, she might not have seen anything like this before. It wasn’t too surprising when she lost the connection, and despite trying to get it back, it didn’t seem to work. Right before Rose shut down, she gave Dean a signal. It took a while before he got it. She wanted him to know that the panicked, scared feeling she got came from the person they were looking through. They were the emotions that person was feeling, and they were so intense that Rose couldn’t shake them off.  


Suddenly, as Rose shut down, Dean’s mind found Violet’s instead. He felt her inside his head, but both were just moving around more in the darkness. He felt the effort she was making to get a grip on one of the three strains, seemingly avoiding the one Rose had just been connected to.  


While the first strain had been panicked, this one seemed extremely calm. It was almost sickening, Dean found. When Violet wrapped her mind around the strain, both of them were once again looking through somebody else’s eyes.  


This time they saw a young woman, panicked and exhausted, trying as quickly as possible to put her pants back on. The girls’ make up was completely leaked out by the tears running over cheeks. Dean also saw an aggressive looking man who was suddenly way too close.  


Then Dean’s hands – well technically, not his, but okay – grabbed the man and knock him against the wall of the alley they were standing in. The man tried to fight back and his eyes looked furious while he was spitting ugly words. But the person Violet and Dean were looking through stayed calm. It wasn’t a happy calmness, but more a worn calmness. Like this person already went through this again and again it was almost like routine to him or her – Dean didn’t really know if it was a woman or man.  


One hand held the man with a painful and tight grasp while the person lifted their other hand and then pressed two fingers on the man’s forehead. The man simply squeaked before falling on the ground.  


Well, only his body fell, because Dean saw the man also standing where his hands kept him, but now he was more… glowing? And somehow also kind of fading? Dean had seen enough in his life to know that that was probably the man’s soul the way a psychic would see it. The soul looked like nothing Dean had seen before, nothing alike to the small ball of light he remembers Death holding when he returned Sam’s back to them. At that exact moment a lot of murmur went through Violet’s ears and her perception started fading back to the moving blackness, bringing Dean along with her again.  


(In the meantime, Sam and Cas were looking at the ladies who were writing unreadable things on their mirrors with closed eyes. Their facial expressions went from shock to disgust to surprise to incomprehension. It sure didn’t look positive at all and the reading took a suspicious long time.  


“Dean really shouldn’t drive after this,” Cas whispered to Sam. Sam nodded in agreement.)  


Now there was only one more strain of the impression left. The two ladies, both having recovered from whatever they just saw, wrapped their minds around it, taking Dean along with them without any of them having choice on the matter.  


Once they were back inside somebody’s head, Dean suddenly felt cold, emotionless, uncaring. In front of them, there was a little boy, lying in bed. The kid looked pale and ill. Next to him stood a woman who took a little box of pills from the kid’s nightstand. With her other hand, the woman opened the boy’s mouth. At the exact moment the woman wanted to put the pills into the kid’s mouth, the body Dean was currently inside of took action.  


The person planted a knife into the woman’s back, surely touching some vital organs there. Dean hadn’t even been aware he was holding the weapon in the first place. The woman screamed and fell on the bed, over the sick boy who didn’t notice and kept his eyes firmly shut. The woman wasn’t dead – not yet – instead moaning angrily and trying to get up.  


The person rose his hand and at exactly the same time Dean felt his fingers snap, the woman’s neck broke with a horrifying noise, reminding Dean of Lucifer inside Sam’s body, snapping Bobby’s neck that exact same way.  


With a loud gasp, Rose and Violet let go of Deans hands, pulling him all the way back into the real world where everything was suddenly so bright. Dean felt Sam pulling on his arm to get his attention, but Dean just held up his hand to stop him. The two women looked at each other and started mumbling some incoherent words.  


“Did you see-?”  


“-yes! Have you noticed-?”  


“Exactly!”  


Right before Dean could get angry at them for being mysterious like that again after everything that just happened, the ladies looked at the three men.  


“Sorry, boys, we need to do some research,” they both said at the same time. They took each others hands and closed their eyes again, not paying any more attention to the three guests in their living room.  


“How did it go?” Dean heard Sam ask next to him. When his eyes were finally accustomed back to the reality that was their world, Dean simply shrugged.  


“I have no clue, but I'm never, ever doing that again!” Dean shuddered for a moment, thinking back of whatever strange vision he had just witnessed.  


“Of course it was surely vague,” Cas replied calmly. “The search for a soul mate has never been easy. I heard it’s quite a challenge.”  


“And you’re only thinking about telling me that now?” Dean muttered bitterly, shaking his head once more and rubbing his eyes. “The Mark probably didn’t make it easier, you guys should’ve seen it… it was just… strange.” Dean didn’t want to jump to conclusions just yet. He wasn’t a psychic; maybe everything he saw was normal and needed to be decoded some way by Rose and Violet. There was probably just some sort of hidden message in these people randomly murdering other people.  


After what felt like hours but were only a few minutes, Rose and Violet opened their eyes again and faced the guys who were sitting in their ginormous sofa.  


“We have weird news,” one of the said. Dean didn’t even care who it was that spoke.  


“Great!” he said, not even hiding his sarcasm anymore. Sam gave him a poke in the side, and Dean slapped his arm away.  


Violet looked at Rose and Rose started explaining. “So, we’ll lead you through what we saw for Sam and Castiel. And afterwards, Dean, we’ll explain what it all meant.”  


The three of them nodded in agreement. Rose then continued.  


“We didn’t see one person, we saw three-“  


“Persons, Rose?” Violet interrupted. Rose glared at her and waved at her to shut her up.  


“I’m trying to explain it here, one thing at a time!” Ah, the way they acted reminded Dean a little bit of Sam. Of course, whatever they were talking about, Dean had no clue.  


“Is it normal that you saw three… persons? I thought you could only have one soulmate?” Sam asked when the twins seemed a bit distracted by their bickering.  


“Not so quickly, boy, let us explain. This isn’t easy to understand so you better pay attention,” Violet said.  


“So, these three persons punished some bad people: a murderer, a rapist and a lady with a very severe case of the syndrome of Munchausen by Proxy.”  


“That’s that thing when people make their kids ill on purpose, right? Like that woman we saw who wanted to give her kid those pills?” Dean asked, just to be sure. The women nodded.  


“Well, that’s very simply put, but yes.” Violet answered. “And we are sure that one of these three persons is your soul mate but-“  


“- we just couldn’t get a grip on who it is exactly,” Rose finished for her sister. Dean then sighed.  


“Okay,” he said while trying to remain calm. ‘Did you get their names at least?”  


Rose nodded “Yes, yes, when we checked each other’s visions, we went looking for identity cards and stuff to get their names, but…” Oh, now they were hesitating… What was it now? This sure didn’t feel right.  


“What? What is it?” Sam asked impatiently. Violet seemed to think for a second, then replied.  


“They aren’t normal people,” she started.  


“We think they are an extremely rare species. Well, more like a breed whose existence hasn’t really been proven before,” Rose continued.  


“Wait, what? My soul mate isn’t even human?” Dean asked, baffled at this sudden revelation.  


“Of course your soul mate is human! He or she just isn’t a normal kind of human. The three handled magic like it was their daily tool.” Rose explained. Great, Dean thought to himself. He was surely stuck with a friggin’ witch or something.  


“We think they are a species that were made era’s ago when the humanity started acting like brainless murder machines and evil makers for the first time after God created humanity. We believe they are made to destroy the dark part of humanity. But there exists no lore about them, because there was no proof, they were even too mysterious to become myths. Besides, they only seemed to be born when the world was loaded by the misery that humanity caused. Last time other psychics spotted them was during world war two. These persons didn’t survive, so these were definitely new ones.” Violet continued  


“Nobody ever gave a name to this species, until that woman Bernadette came along!” Rose looked furious. “These species were a secret that only real psychics knew about. Hell, we were the only people seeing them, why would we discuss something like that with normal people? They would freak out! But no, Bernadette, a young psychic who hadn’t even seen one of these special persons in her whole life, decided she wanted to research this species together with this innocent, parapsychologist Nancy!”  


“Yes, so after a while this Nancy, a smart girl, found some correct characteristics, but of course she never found out about the magic part. So Nancy unknowingly described them as peaceful, filled with empathy, just some real good doers who appear to have psychic abilities like telepathy. And Bernadette stopped helping her because she didn’t know anything about it! She didn’t have her facts straight! There was only one positive result from her craving to become a famous parapsychologist, and that is that we have a name for the species now-“  


“The Indigo Children,’ Cas interrupted their continuous rambling. Good, it was driving Dean mad! He wasn’t even able to follow anymore! Who was Bernadette? Who was Nancy? Did that even matter? Still, he threw Cas a questioning glance, and the Angel cleared his throat as he clarified. “They’re creations who are born like normal humans, but they are each in turn gifted with angelic, demonic and human powers. They appear to be very creative with these powers and combine them in ways no other creature can.”  


Well, that didn’t sound dangerous. How was it that they had never heard about this before?  


“They all have these three power sources, but one Child is more bound with the angelic power, one more with the demonic power and one is more bound with the human power.”  


Dean then nodded, and next to him, Sam seemed to follow as well. Despite that they were actually able to understand whatever Cas was saying, it still mostly sounded like nonsense to Dean.  


“Okay, but why the name Indigo Children?” Sam asked.  


“Because Nancy saw a lot of talented, sensitive, spiritually gifted and empathic children getting born with a bright, indigo aura. She linked this to the powers she was studying, but these aura’s were only a coincidence,” Rose explained. Dean sighed, why did he see this coming? Couldn’t his soul mate just be a normal bus driver of mailman? Was that so hard?  


“So, how do we find them?” Sam asked, he was ready to take action and solve this problem that was haunting them for a long time now.  
“Well,” Violet replied, “we saw their names and the countries they live in-“  


“-but we didn’t see their exact location. Seeing three people at the same time is… hard and complicated,” Rose filled in. Dean couldn’t blame them, he had seen what they saw and he thought it was a miracle that the two ladies found the identity of these Indigo’s in the first place.

 

“I still don’t get why I can’t drive,” Dean grumbled, sitting next to Sam, but this time in the passenger seat. His younger brother was currently driving his baby, which normally Dean did allow, but right now he could have used the distraction of the road. His mood had sunk very deep after Rose and Violet gave them the identity and location from the Indigo Children.  


“Why aren’t they all just living in freaking America?!” He grumbled right after complaining about the car.  


“The US isn’t the only country in the entire world, Dean,” Sam replied calmly. Of course, both of them knew exactly what was bothering Dean so much right now; international travel. That meant that the three of them surely had to jump into a plane to get there. Oh, where had the time gone when Cas would have just flown them there in only a matter of seconds?  


“Cas, can you read their info again, please?” Dean asked. He could probably already mouth the details along with Cas, since it was about the twelfth time he asked for this. Castiel cleared his throat and started reading the little piece of paper the psychic sisters had given them… again.  


“Valo Watson from England, male. Eryn Mundis from Greece, female. Liv Reinaerts from Belgium, female.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Why would I even help you if you couldn’t even kill Crowley for me, boy?” Rowena askedwith a big mischievous smile. Dean glanced at Sam. What was Rowena talking about? But Sam ignored Dean’s questioning eyes.

Awesome, so if Rowena wasn’t going to help them, neither would Crowley, thanks to Sam. Dean turned around and walked out of Rowena’s cell without saying a word, leaving his brother alone with the witch. Dean didn’t want to give Rowena the pleasure of seeing that she managed to piss him off.  


Dean walked upstairs to get a beer. He passedCasand Charlie,who were sitting at the table;Charlie behind her laptop and Cas in front of her, talking while she was working. He had a book before him and must have been shifting through the pages. Probably just to keep him busy, becauseCas knew that there wasn’t any lore about the Indigo Children.

“Whaddup, Dean?” Charlie asked when Dean sat down next to her.

“Rowena doesn’t want to help us, like we predicted,” Dean mumbled while he unwittingly ripped the brand off the beer bottle.

“Okay, so what does she want?” Charlie tries.

“What does she-?” Dean doesn’t finish his sentence. This here was yet another sign that Dean couldn’t focus or concentrate on things as well as he used toanymore. He was constantly distracted by his own anger.

Oh, no. Dean cursed as he jumped back of his chair startling both Charlie and Cas, and sprinted to the stairs to get back to Sam and Rowena. He ran into his brother, who was just walking upstairs. Dean grabbedhis shoulders and grasped them unknowingly hard.

“What. Did. You. Do?” Dean hissed in a menacing whisper. Sam clenched his jawsby Dean’s strong grip. It was clear on his face that he knew exactly what Dean was talking about.

“She wanted a deal, Dean,” Sam said quietly.

“No,” Dean answered curtly.

“We can always hunt her down later, Dean! You need to survive the Mark of Cain first!”

That was when everything started to look red in his eyes.Dean’s head simply exploded. His brother promised freedom to a freaking evil witch?! Wasn’t this kind of thinking what put them in trouble again and again?

Sam seemed to know what was happening immediately. As if he saw Deans fist coming before he even decided to throw the punch, the younger hunter quickly dove away, freeing himself from his brother's furious grip. He ran to the room where Charlie and Castiel were sitting, still seeming a bit confused about Dean’s sudden departure. The fact that they’re no longer sitting down was clear enough that they were about to go in pursuit. They both looked surprised when Sam sprinted towards them and picked up the chairCas had been sitting on not five minutes earlier.

“Sam, what-?”But the angelnever managed to finish his question when he saw Dean stomping in right behind Sam.

“Get Charlie out of here, Cas!” Sam yelled. His voice was just vague inside Dean’s mind, though. He immediately recognized that he had reached the blind part of his anger. The one he couldn’t really control anymore the moment it was triggered. Though right now all he wants to do is smack his brother on the head until he realized how stupid he was being, he couldn’t help but agree. Cas should get Charlie back to safety, pronto!

Charlie protested immediately, because that was just the thing she would do, though. Somehow, in this twisted world, this brave woman wanted to help Dean. Dean, the person who didn’t even deserve anything like that at all.

After some small arguing that Dean clearly missed, Charlie huffed out a breath and hurried back upstairs. Cas didn’t follow her up, instead staying down there to help Sam.

No, Dean thought. Don’t make me hurt you, too.

But it was hard to concentrate any further. The animal inside of him finally broke through completely, and instantly, the only thing Dean could focus on was smacking Sam’s face. Who did his brother think he was, making stupid decisions like that?!

When Cas tried to hold him back, Dean quickly turned around, freeing himself from Cas's hands and planted his fist right in the angel’s face. This didn’t really hurt Castiel as much as it would hurt a human, but he still backed off a little by the shock which gave Dean, in less than a second, the chance to attack Sam. Or so he thought.

Before Dean could turn back around to Sam, the younger Winchester smashed the chair he was holding with all his strength on Dean’s head, making Dean see black immediately. He fell down with a grunt and laid still. The last thing he could remember before he blacked out was how he was messing up the floor with the blood that was probably dripping from where the chair hit him.

 

The next morning Charlie was reading a book in the old sofa that had never been replaced since the men of letters left this place, when Dean walked in. He sat down in a fauteuil that was standing in front of Charlie’s sofa. Dean rubbed his sore head and just sat there, thinking, silently.

He watched Charlie as she was reading The Hobbit, again. It was a peaceful sight, or well, it shouldhavebeen a peaceful sight. But nothing felt peaceful for him anymore and it was exactly that thought that was already giving Dean stressthat morning. He looked for something that coulddistract himself, so he took a chair, put it behind Charlie and read her story along with her over her shoulder. It was a weird sight, but he really needed to empty his mind. Dean never read the book, nor did he see the movie, so he couldn’t really follow what was happening. The fact that she was near the end didn’t help either.

“Wait what?! Is Thorin going to die?” Dean asked, figuring that this Thorin-character was quite a big deal in the story. In return Dean got himself a smack on the arm for speaking.

“Dean! Don’t spoil it!” Charlie snapped back, but clearly faking the anger because of the sudden grin that showed up on her face.Of course she knew how the book ended, she had read it, like, a thousand times. She even said that her mother used to read it to her as a bedtime story.

At that moment, Sam walked in, stretching his back. Dean stood up and looked a little bit awkward.

“Sam, did you knock me down with a chair, yesterday?” he asked carefully, trying not to sound too angry about it – which he wasn’t, of course. Sam nodded slowly and watched Dean with watchful eyes. Dean nodded back with a sad smile.

“Smart move, look, I’m-“

“Yeah, I know,” Sam looked at Dean, and the older brother felt a bit of annoyance upon having his apology interrupted like that. “We have to take action, right now, though.”

It took a few hours before Rowena could locate the three Indigo’s. In the meantime, Sam, Dean, Castiel and Charlie were discussing their plans.

“Should we go alone? You know, at the same time but split so one of us goes to Greece, one to Belgium and one to England?” Dean proposed. Sam looked doubtful, but it was Castiel who answered.

“I don’t think that would be wise, we all don't know that much about the Indigo Children. We don’t know their powers, their weaknesses, so we better face them together.”

Dean nodded.“So who comes along and who stays here? Someone has to keep an eye on the bunker…” He really wanted to finish that sentence with ‘and the witch, but oh no, wait, Sam let her free’ but heknew they would just start to argue about it and he would get mad.Again. So he chewed on the inside of his cheek as hard as he could, just to shut up and not trigger himself.

“Well, Dean has to go, of course. Cas knows at least about the existence of the Indigo Children, so he has to go too.” Sam looked at Charlie, who already knew she would lose. “Rock paper scissors?”

Charlie seemed surprised that the younger Winchester really wanted to give her a chance to go. She looked so mollified by Sam’s trust that she played the game with big sparkly eyes. Charlie threw rock and Sam scissors so she won. Grinning she threw her arms in the air.

“YES! YES!” she yelled out. Sam scratched his head, looking a bit surprised that he actually lost – normal, since he normally always won with Dean.

“So, I guess I have to stay-“ he started, but Charlie shook her head.

“Nah,”she interrupted him “I’ll stay, I wasn’t really planning on going, you know. Just wanted to see if you would actually have let me go.”

Dean snorted. That sneaky girl, he thinks fondly. “I wouldn’t. You know I love you, Charlie, but-“

“Yeah, I know.” Charlie smiled widely and side-hugged Dean, and then Sam. “I’ll babysit the bunker!”

“And don’t go hunting on your own!” Dean said. Charlie gasped in shock then, putting a hand on her chest as if she was offended.

“Why, Dean, why would you even think I would do such a thing?” she asked, and then she winked at him. Dean just snorted again, already knowing he was going to miss her sense of humor.

The moment they were packed, the guys put their luggage in the car and said goodbye to Charlie. Rowena was freed one hour before that, the moment she went to give them the specific addresses of the people they were looking for.

“I know you’re scared of planes, Dean, but don’t try to faint!” Charlie called outjokingly, but Dean didn’t think it was funny at all. He really, really, really wasn’t looking forward to the flight. Their first stop was going to be London, England. Besides, how the hell did she even know about that? He never told- oh right, she read the books.

When the plane moved to take off, Sam didn’t do a thing to calm Dean’s nerves, who was freaking out a little. This felt like revenge for all those times Dean laughed with Sam’s fear of clowns. Dean, who was biting his nails and was constantly checking his belt, really wanted to smack the grin from his brother’s face. In the meantime, Cas, who was seated next to Sam but with the hallway between them, was really enjoying this very human thing to do (much to Dean’s surprise, because honestly, he just felt like dying on the spot). He normally only used his wings to fly, which was way quicker of course. The fact that his wings were fried (literally), meant that he couldn’t fly off anywhere, anymore, until they were healed. Cas explained once to Dean that it could take years until they were back to normal, and Dean had noticed how regretful Cas had sounded about that.

Dean didn’t know what was passing through the Angel’s head right now. His stare seemed ensless, as he was looking all the way through Dean’s window.

Dean was still gnawing his fingers when his ear started to hurt from the pressure of the take off. Sam grinned and offered his brother a piece of chewing gum. Dean grabbed the package and took three out of them, instead.

“Casssh,” Dean said with his mouth full of unchewed chewing gum “You’re ssshitting by the aisle. When you see assshtewardesssh, assshk a drink for me, will you?”And because Caswas Cas, he first ordered a lemonade, then looked at Dean’s face and heard Sam snorting, and seemed to remember that Dean loves to drink alcohol. So he corrected himself and told the stewardess to bring some cognac instead.

“Is that okay?”Cas asked Dean after the stewardess walked away. Dean nodded while trying to chew the big amount of chewing gum he stuffed in his mouth.

After some time in the plane, Dean started to feel the sorrow leaking back into his brain. When Sam noticed his elder brother’s grim faced, he asked what was wrong.

“These Indigo’s, they are killers, Sammy. So whoever my soulmate might be, it is something we would hunt…”

Sam nodded softly. “You know Rose and Violet said that they weren’t sure that all the Indigo’s killed the persons they were fighting with, right? Maybe not all three are killers.”  
Dean remembered, indeed, but he couldn't help doubting.

“Avebury, please,” Sam said to the taxi driver after they got into his wagon. They had to drive two and a half hours to get to the small town. After driving this amount of time, they passed some typical Englishcottages some fields and… some freaky, big stones actually standing in these green fields.

“What are those?” Sam asked the cabdriver curiously, feeling like he was a little bit of a tourist after all.

“These are megaliths, a stone circlelike Stonehenge, but they say these megaliths are even older than the Stonehenge,” the man explained with a thick accent on his voice. One Dean couldn’t really place, since he would just simply call it ‘Brittish’.

“Did they have a purpose?” Sam wondered out loud. The nerd…

The cabdriver scratched his nose before answering. “They believe the stone circle had some kind of prehistoric astronomical meaningor use. But nobody knows for sure,” The man explained. “The only thing I know about them is that every year there are teenagers dancing around the megaliths, with bed sheets wrapped around their bodies. First time I saw that, I thought it was a cult, you know? But actually it’s a yearly school trip from god-knows-what-school from somewhere in the Benelux. Oh and the sheets? Well, I’ve an aunt living in the neighborhood and she walked past the field one day and she saw these teens, so she got curious and asked them what the heck they were doing. You’ll never believe it! They were dressed as druids for a school assignment. And the teachers were laughing with them of course, because these teens were dancing in sheep-shit, dressed as a bunch of idiots. I laughed my ass off when I heard that and my aunt –“

Dean wasn’t listening to the cabdriver’s chatter. This town looked so peaceful and innocent. It was hard to imagine the weird creature, the Indigo, walking around here and not being noticed.The Indigo must act strange, different than normal people. Dean was sure about that and his already started itching. It felt like a good hunt, he could take this Indigo down and it would be one creature less that lives from killing humans.

The cabdriver dropped the guys off at their hotel. The hotel was located close to the address of the first Indigo, that’s why Sam booked it. Dean watched as Sam plumped down on his bed, mumbling something about sleep. Dean felt tired too, his eyes burned of exhaustion, but he wouldn’t be able to sleep. If Dean would lie down at that moment, he would be alone in his head, overthinking things. Just him in his own head could be very dangerous, or maybe just depressing. His stomach already hurt from just thinking about it.Cas was, as curious as he was, reading the hotel brochure.

Dean grabbed his coat and decided to search for a bar nearby, when Castiel suddenly said something. Dean wasn’t really focused so he hadn’t heard what the angel was saying.

“Sorry, Cas, what did you say?” Dean asked after turning to Cas, while putting his coat on.

“I want to play Ping-Pong!” What? It took Dean a second to get what the angel was saying. Cas saw Dean’s confusion and tried to explain himself “Look, they have Ping-Pong tables in the hotel and I thought that it would be better for you to play some Ping-Pongthan go to a bar to distract yourself with alcoholic beverages.”

Ah, Cas was just the same old blunt Angel he always was. The Winchester felt kind of busted, like a teen who wanted to sneak out of the house, but he didn’t have the chance to argue about it with Cas as the angel already opened the door to leave the hotel room.

“If you really don’t want to go to bed and save yourself from a jetlag tomorrow, then just go play some Ping-Pong with the angel, Dean…”Sam muttered sleepy with his face buried in a pillow. He just laid there on the bed with his clothes still on.

“Weren’t you supposed to be asleep?” Dean grumbled bitterly while hanging his coat back on the coat rack.

It took a while before Cas got the game, but once he understood how it went, he became as competitive as Dean. Watching the angelstruggleand grumble when Dean scored, actually enlightened Dean’s mood a bit. He still wasn’t happy, but his little smile every now and then didn’t feel so fake or plastered on his face.

But as soon as they stopped playing, he felt his mood already going backwards as they were climbing the stairs back to the hotel room. Castiel’s happy chatter drummed in his ears.Cas didn't talk that much, though, but it felt that way in Dean’s head. And with every word, Dean felt a thick, dark wave going trough his head.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eh, whot?! Fifty hits? 
> 
> Fifty hits probably doesn't seem much to you guys, but to me it looks like a little miracle...
> 
> Thanks for reading :)

“So, they come and get the car back when we drop it at the airport?” Sam asked Dean while they were driving to the address Rowena got them in the car Dean rented somewhere nearby.It was already a day later, because, as Sam predicted, Dean had a terrible jetlag the morning after he played Ping-Pong with Cas.

Dean really couldn’t leave his bed until passed noon and when he finally got out of his bed, he felt weak and lacked energy so he could only sit and watch some television. So, Sam called it a day off. Well, no, Sam called it actually Dean’s ‘Jetlag Holiday’. Sam went jogging after Dean threw a pillow at his brother for mocking with him. So, yeah, that’s how they wasted a day, according to Dean, who didn’t want to listen to Castiel telling him that confronting the Indigo would go smoother after a day of rest. 

The location was only one street away from their hotel, but because the three didn’t know what to expect, they wanted the getaway car if the Indigo would start attacking them. That, or the thing could serve well for locking the damn thing off.

“Yeah, we only have to call the owner when we leave the country,” Dean mumbled in annoyance. This car is literal shit! Why was a Goddamn Polo the only option they could get? Oh, right, because not other freaking car rental was flexible enough to work with the Winchesters vague schedule. That, and Cas might have accidentally slipped a few times that there was risk of a crash. After that, a few doors slammed in their face and they stopped bringing Cas inside of the shop.

“Okay, one house, further, yes! This must be it,” Sam guided Dean as he was driving. Dean parked the lame-ass Polo, silently wishing he could accidentally crash the thing against the wall but keeping himself in check for the time being. The three climbed out of the little car and a second later they were standing in front of the house, just silently staring at the building.

It was a white cottage with wooden shutters and all kinds of Ivy, some with small flowers, growing on the walls. Still, it didn’t look messy at all. Instead, the house looked nicely and carefully kept. The green bushes, the trees around the house, the wind rustling through their leafs, the quietenvironment and the mild sunlight made the total picture look very peaceful.

That was, until the rain suddenly started to poor down of course. Dean cursed as they sprinted to the front door. Cas quickly pushed the button of the doorbell before Sam or Dean would, and then they waited a few minutes. And then some more minutes…

“Maybe they didn’t hear us?” Sam triedwhile he rang the bell once more.Nobody opened the door this time, either. Dean felt the water dripping into his shoes and firmly pressed the bell again. His pants were soaked already.

After waiting for long enough, Dean turned around without a word and started searching for a backdoor.

“Dean, what are you doing?” Sam whispered while following his elder brother.

“If they don’t let us in, we have to break in,” Dean muttered

“But maybe they, or she- him- whatever-is really not at home!” The older Winchester picked the lock until the door opened. Then he whispered to Cas and Sam “Okay, you guys check downstairs, I check upstairs,” and walked in without waiting for a response.

He didn’t need help, he thought, so it would be wiser to let Cas help Sam. Since Dean got the Mark, he became stronger, quicker, he surely could manage on his own.

Everything in the house looked rustic, but in a cozy, warm way.Bordeauxcurtains, a little wooden table with mail on it,a big, old mirror with a golden, curly framework hanging in the hallway… it all made him feel almost welcome.Not that Dean was looking at the fine-looking interior.

Dean took the stairs without making any noise and started checking the rooms until he saw one door, at the end of the hallway, that was open. The light of the room shone into the hallway. Silently Dean crept to the door, his gun ready and his knife in his pocket. He pressed himself against the hallway wall and took a quick look into the room.

There, a man was sat behind his laptop, probably working on something with a heavy, black headphone that covering his ears. The music was playing so loudly that Dean could hear some of it. What kind of song he was listening to, Dean couldn't tell. He only heard some vague noises.

No wonder the man didn’t hear the doorbell. The room the man sat in was some sort of bureau with bookshelves filled with books, cd’s and DVD’s.In the middle of the room between the bookshelves, there stood a sofa and a coffee table. The man was sitting behind a desk with his back to the window. Dean saw some diplomas hanging on the wall and could only read the words history and archeologyfrom it.

Suddenly the man stretched his arms, put the headphones and his reading glasses down, turned to the door…and saw Dean staring at him.Dean showed himself, and his gun, and for a second, the big, surprised eyes of the man became evenbigger.

But then, like he was already used to burglars with guns, the surprise disappeared from the man’s face. Dean felt confused, but held his gun tight and clearly aimed at the man. Why didn’t this person freak out? Because he wasn’t afraid? Why not?

Maybe the man was the Indigo and maybe he had powers thatcouldkill Dean in a second like the persons in the visions he got through Rose and Violet! Dean held his gun even harder. He noticed Cas and Sam as they quietly slipped behind him.The man didn't even look surprised or shocked or anything to see the other two guys.

“I’m searching for Valo Watson,” Dean announces.

“Of course you do,” the person whisperedsarcastically with a weird English accent. “Let's go downstairs, I don’t want you guys to wake mummo.” The man turned back to his laptop to shut it down.  
“We are not going anywhere! And we are not afraid of that mummo-thingie of yours!” Dean growled. Suddenly, Sam grabbed Dean’s shoulder and took a step forward. Dean already knew that Sam was going to play good cop and it annoyed the shit out of him. Why would they have to be kind to this weird man?

“Do we need to be afraid?” Sam asked calmly. The man smiled while pulling the plug out of his laptop.

“Do you have to be afraid of mummo? Well my isoäti-eh-grandmother’s temper can be very bad if she is randomly woken.”

Dean was startled. Is he talking about his grandmother? She is mummo? The man stood up and walked passed the three confused men, into his hallway

“And do we need to be afraid of you?” Sam asked while following this mysterious person. Dean and Cas then in turn followed the younger Winchester and the weird person who shrugged as he answered Sam’s question.

“Maybe, I dunno…it kind of depends on you.” Then he turned his head to the guys while walking down the stairs. “My name is Valo Watson by the way.”

“My name is Sam, this is my brother Dean and our friend Cas,” Sam introduced themselves.

“So, why are you guys hunting me?” Valo asked while making some tea. Okay, Dean thought, so he knew they were hunters. They wereprobably not the first ones hunting him… Dean got suspicious about what could’ve happened to the other hunters, about what this Indigo could’ve done to them.

Cas, Dean and Sam were sitting in the living room next to the kitchen, where Valo was working on his tea. Dean was still holding his gun. Well, he wasn’t pointing at Valo with it anymore, but it sure felt safe in his hands.

“Well, long story short. Dean is looking for his soulmate to save him from this curseand we only know that he or she is an Indigo.” Valo stood still in the doorway and watched with his brown eyes while Cas was talking, cocked his eyebrow, nodded and went on with making tea.When Sam shot an angry glance to Castiel, Dean knew that his brother was silently cursing Cas’s bluntness for just telling why they werethere.Dean let his brother be annoyed, he had no problem with Cas taking action instead of talking around the facts, and finally took a moment to look at Valo.

Valo had dark-brown, half-long, wavy hair that was looking fuzzy, like the man hadn’t brushed his hair that day. He was approximatelyas tall as Dean. The Indigo scratched his head as he returned to the doorway

“So there might be a chance that I am his soul mate?”Dean nodded and felt like he had to clarify that so there wouldn’t be a weird misunderstanding.

“Yeah, but in a nonromantic way, of course!”

Valo smiled widely and let a little laugh out. “I do believe that soul mates indeed don’t always have to be romantic, Dean, so no worries.”

Then the smile disappeared from his face, making way for another neutral expression. “And...are you guys planning on killing me?” Valo asked while sipping on his tea. The question sounded as normal as if he asked what weather it was going to be tomorrow.

Dean shrugged. “Well, not for now…But who’ll say?”

This made Sam aim his angry glance at Dean. Valo nodded and then noticed Sam’s annoyance

“Don’t be angry, Sam. Your brother is honest, I can appreciate that.” He then stared into his cup, his face showed that he was thinking about the facts they gave him. ”What is the use of curing Dean? I mean, I’m not moving to America with a big chance of being killed there, just to cure Dean from hiccups or something.”

This time Sam quickly started talking before the Angel or his brother could say something dumb. Dean looked irritated at his brother as Sam surprised him with taking his arm without asking. The younger Winchester rolled Dean’s sleeve up, so Valo could see the Mark.

“This is the Mark of Cain, the thing that turns mybrother into a killing machine. We can't get rid of it without just passing it on, which would turn another person into a blind killer. Recently we figured out that his soul mate could help us…”

Valo nodded. “But you haven’t figured out yet how this soul mate can help you…” Sam shook his head. Valo took another moment to process. In the meantime, Dean asked himself how long it would take Valo to disagree, how long it would take before they would start fighting and see Valo’s true, evil powers.

“I’m curious,” Cas suddenly said, waking Valo from his thoughts. “Do you know what kind of Indigo you are?”

Valo looked surprised. “Kind? Are there kinds? How many Indigo’s are there?”

Sam scraped his throat. “Eh, Cas, no lore , remember? How would Valo know all of this?”

“Oh, right… maybe instinct?” the angel guessed

“No, obviously not, I only know the term Indigobecause you guys just said it to me. The other hunters never knew what I was, they were always trying these weird signs and spells but because they didn’t know what I was, it never worked…”

“Valo,” Sam started, suddenly sounding very serious. Dean knew what he was about to ask, so the older brother unwittingly tightened his muscles. He was prepared for this, for solving this the hard way. “Are you willing to come with us, to America. We can’t promise you what will happen…”

Valo looked atSam. Then he leaned back and rubbed his eyes, mumbling some words to himself in anincomprehensible language. Valo gazed at his hands for a moment and then looked at Dean with decisive eyes. He straightened his back and answered, with a small grin: “Yeah, sure, why not.”

Completely taken by surprise, Dean weakened his grip and his gun softly plumped down on his lap. He stared at Valo with big, questioning eyes. Well, he surely didn’t see that coming.

“You can’t be angry with Valo that he needs a few days before he can leave, Dean. The man has a life here,” Castiel stated calmly as they were driving back to the hotel. Dean sighed. He preferred leaving immediately and travel to their next destination, Greece, rather than waiting a few days and doing nothing.

Because the guys weren’t naïve, they saw the possibility that Valo would be lying about voluntarilymovingto America. That’s why they decided to keep an eye on the guy. Leaving Sam with what probably was a monster didn’t feel good, Dean had been stressing out since he and Cas left Valo’s house. Tomorrow would be Cas’s turn to guard Valo, so then Dean would worry sick about Castiel instead of Sam. Yes, this really wouldn’t be a peaceful week for Dean…

 

With a pillow and a blanket in his hands, Sam stared to the sofa. The thing wasn’t quitesmall, but it wasn’t as enormous as him either. Valo came standingnext to Sam and also stared at his sofa. Then he looked at Sam from head to toe and stared back at the sofa.

“You know what, I’ll sleep here. You can have my bed.”He said while turning around to go to the kitchen. The weird forms of kindness coming from that man always seem to startle Sam because Valo has no reason to be kind to him. He actually had more reasons to hate the brothers, because of them kind of forcing him to leave his house.

But yet, he voluntarily wanted to go with them, what also made Sam looking at him with startled eyes.

“N-no that won’t be necessary, but thank you…” Sam stuttered. He kind of trusted this man, Valo didn’t look or feel like a threat at all. But that didn’t make Sam less alert.

Valo laughed.“I don’t want you to break your back on my sofa, lad. I’ve slept in that thing a thousand times, it's no trouble. At least I fit in it.” Sam heard the weird accent through the man's oh, so British accent. It wasn’t really notable and Sam probably just didn’t know how the British accent of Avebury sounded like, if it sounded a bit different from the standard. But Sam couldn’t help questioning it.

“Valo, are you one hundredpercent English?” Sam asked curiously. Valo came standing in the doorway while peeling a potato.

“Yeah, well, I’m half-Finish… I’ve lived in Finland for a big part of my life. Well actually half my life. When I was fifteen, I moved to England, to my mummo.”

Sam nodded, he didn’t ask, it was none of his business. So instead, he asked if he could help Valo in the kitchen. Valo gave him the potatoes to peel and said he had to take care of some things, so he thanked Sam for his help.

Valo went to the living room, took his cellphone and started calling to someone. Sam could hear him talking.

“Ah, Tarja? Hello, sweet sister!”And after that, Sam discovered that Valo was capable of talking in English and Finish at the same time, so he didn’t understand half of the conversation. Some Finish word were repeated a few times, like huonojauutisia or something like that. He also heard mummo a lot, so the conversation probably was about his grandmother. What Sam could make out of it, with the few English words Valo used, was that Valo asked his sister to take care of their grandmother. Valo used an excuse, something about the army finally calling him to join. And that’s when Sam found out that Valo had prepared for this, a long time ago. He knew that he would disappear one day, so he made up a story about wanting to join the army.

“My sister will try to be here the day after tomorrow, she’ll be taking care of our grandmother while…while I’m away… ,” Valo told Sam while putting his phone in the pocket of his jeans. “So I guess we can leave in three days.”

Sam nodded while filling the pan with potatoes with water. “Okay, I’ll search for cheap and quick plane tickets to Greece.” Sam took a towel to dry his hands Valo accidentally let his fork drop in the water of the pan. The water splashed on Valo’sneutral, clean, khaki-greenish shirt. But he just looked at Sam with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Greece?! Am I going to Greece?” Sam nodded with a smile, not sure what to think about this sudden outburst of enthusiasm.Valo’s calm appearance faded for a moment while he grinned like a little kid.

“Yeah, the other Indigo’s live in Greece and in Belgium. So after Greece, we’ll be heading to Belgium,” Sam explained. Valo laughed.

“Oh, man! I wish I could tell this to my students…”

Students? Sam looked interested at Valo.

“You teach?” The Indigo stared dreamy at the ceiling when Sam asked that question.

“Oh, yes! I’m a high school teacher. I teach history.I didn’t find any jobs in archeology, so…” And while Valo was talking, Sam started to feel a little uncomfortable. It wasn’t jealousy, Sam just felt a little bit homesick to something he never had. This man, Indigo, whatever, was a few years younger than him, but he had a normal life, a normal career. But Sam could quickly turn his thoughts. How normal could Valo’s life be, as an Indigo? How much blood has this man on his hands?


	5. Chapter 5

When Dean went to the house, since it was his turn to babysit the Indigo, it felt like he went to pick up his kid after a playdate. Cas obviously had a great time guarding Valo. Dean couldn’t even get through the door because Castiel was blocking him, with fun stories.

Urgh. The only difference between Cas and a kid at that moment, in Dean’s opinion, was that the Angel told his stories calmly, he wasn’t jumping or anything, just talking about his day. 

“So we went on a walk to the megaliths with Valo’s grandmother. You have to go and see these stones, they are…enormous. Oh and Valo taught me how to play cards.” Then Cas looked a little bit more serious at Dean, like a father who wanted to give his son some important wisdom. Well, if Dean wouldn’t be so grumpy all the time, he would laugh with the way his friend could change from a happy kid to a serious parent. “Valo’s grandmother, you have to be kind to her, Dean.” 

Dean cocked his eyebrow, but Castiel kept staring at him with his do-as-I-say-face. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Dean eventually said. He didn’t even think about asking why, he wasn’t interested in the old lady. 

Valo’s grandmother was sitting in a fauteuil that was standing next to the sofa. She was watching some kind of old musical. Dean threw a quick look at the screen and saw that it was nothing other than ‘The Sound of Music.’The lady didn’t notice Dean, so he walked to the kitchen, the place where Valo almost always seemed to be. 

Right now he was doing the dishes. He looked like he was in a hurry. Valo was wearing a long black coat over his dark-green shirt and black jeans. He had his glasses on and had brushed his hair. He had stubbles, but he didn’t look sloppy.He looked like a-

“Are you going to teach today?!” Valo nodded while cleaning a plate.

“It's Monday, Dean. I called my boss yesterday to say that I would leave the country and he asked me if I could work today as my last day because he couldn’t search a replacement teacher so quickly.”  
Dean felt his mood slowly turning into anger. This wasn’t how he thought this day would go. He wanted to shout to Valo, but after looking at Valo's annoyed-slash-stressed face, he spared the man. 

“So I suppose I’ll have to go to school with you?” Valo nodded quickly and then turned his back to Dean while walking to his granny. 

“Okay, mummo, I have to leave now. I made some soup and there’s some bread on the table. Please don’t forget to eat!” The woman’s eyes looked a bit dreamily at Valo, like she didn’t really see him. Suddenly her eyes went big, she looked surprised.

“Oh, Jack! What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in Finland? You didn’t quit college, did you?” she asked Valo with a concerned smile. 

Valo sighed defeated.“No, mummo, it’s Valo… your grandson?”The lady looked away, thinking. Then she looked back at Valo, her eyes glancing dreamy again.  
“Oh, Valo, I’m sorry… where's Hunter? Is she here too?” Valo bit his lip.

“No, eh, she was busy…maybe tomorrow…but I have to go now. Did you hear about the soup and the bread?” When Valo’s grandmother nodded, he kissed her cheek and took his bag. Dean followed him, a bit saddened. 

Right before Valo walked outside, Dean heard her ask “Jack, is that you?”but Valo didn't answer, instead letting Dean out and closing the door behind them.

They were quiet during the drive to school. Dean had nothing to say to Valo; he didn’t want to feel sorry for him and Valo surely didn’t want to hear Dean's grumpiness. But the Winchester was also thinking about the conversation Valo had with his grandmother right before they left. 

Jack was probably Valo’s dad, who went to Finland to go to college there. That must be why Valo is half-finish, Jack must have met Valo’s mother in Finland, Dean thought. But who is Hunter? And why did Valo leave Finland? Dean sank so deeply in his thoughts, he didn’t notice that they arrived at the high school until he heard Valo smacking his car door shut.

After they walked into the building there was a sudden shift in Valo’s mood. 

“Welcome in my palace!” He smiled at Dean, and after they walked into a classroom, he added: “And welcome in my ballroom!” The classroom looked like a typical high school history classroom: all kinds of maps on the wall, new and old, a mind map about WOII, a timetable filled with historical facts… In the corner of the chalkboard was a photo put between the board and its frame. It was a selfie that a student made of Valo and his other students in that classroom, he was smiling widely. There was only half of the face of the student who took the selfie to see in the corner of the picture.

Dean went to the back of the class to sit behind one of the tables. He rested his head on his hands. Without the Mark, he would be having fun right now, back in high school, watching some high school drama. But when the students came in and greeted Valo respectful, he couldn't help but wish that he was doing something more useful.

Valo started with introducing Dean (which he did with every class that walked in).

“Hi guys, you see that serious, grumpy looking man in the back of the class? That’s mister Winchester. He’s from the inspection so he’s here today to look at how I teach. Now, please, give him the false impression that you love my classes!” When the teens looked at Dean, he waved at them awkwardly. 

The teens loved Valo and Dean had to say too that the Indigo was a pretty good teacher. Valo used a lot of expressions, weird, personal life stories and interesting side facts everyone wanted to know.At some point, he was talking about some kind of summer job he had when he was a teen. 

“So, try to imagine it, a young mister Watson, working in this chicken factory. I got all the beheaded chickens-try not to puke guys! So, I got these and I had to hang them on these weird hooks. And actually, the biggest problem wasn’t the dead chickens, it was always doing the same thing, all day. So, I had a very boring and repetitive job and I got payed way too little! You have to imagine what these people, who were working in these awful factories were going through at that time…”

With every word, Dean asked himself if this guy could be his soul mate. He even tried to make a list, after hearing the same lesson for the second time. But he didn’t know what he had to search in a soul mate, so he stopped trying.

Suddenly he heard some teen girls whispering in front of him.

“Mister Snow looks sooooo good today.”

Dean blinked. Mr. Snow? The other girl laughed a bit cheeky.

“Oh, shut it, Emily!”

Wait, what? Were they talking about Valo? 

“What? He totally looks like a geeky Jon Snow!” Oh lord, they were calling Valo Jon Snow. Teens! Dean rolled his eyes and snorted. After another few references to Snow, Dean whispered loud enough just so that the girls could hear him: 

“I think he looks more like Hodor.”The girls jumped from their chairs. They seemed to have totally forgotten Dean sitting behind them.One of the girls looked over her shoulder at him. 

“Sorry, sir,” she mumbled quickly. Her face was red and her eyes filled with regret. Dean forced a smile to reassure them everything is alright.

“Nah, no worries, girl. I won't tell him,” he said, adding a small wink. She nodded happily and mouthed a thank you.

Every time Valo finished an hour and the group had to leave his classroom, he shortly explained he had to leave the country and he wouldn’t be teaching them anymore. The teens asked many questions and he told them the same he had been telling his sister: the army needed his archeological and historical knowledge for some sort of American mission. Nobody questioned Valo’s story. 

At noon, Valo took Dean to the cafeteria. Dean immediately noticed that all the teen girls and some boys were giggling, whispering and ‘sneaky’ glancing at Valo…and Dean. Did Valo know that he was the center of a lot of teens’ wet dreams?

The Indigo took a sandwich and a bottle of water, Dean took a nasty looking piece of pizza. He nibbled on instead of eating it, since Dean wasn’t hungry, really. He even started talking just to feel a little more comfortable in this crowded place.

“So, Valo, did you know that the kids adore you like you’re some kind of god?”

Valo laughed. “Nah, they just don’t hate me, that’s all! ”He answered while friendly nodding to another teacher that walked past their table. That’s weird…all of the sudden it felt like Dean was talking to Sam instead of talking to Valo. Dean had to blink a few times to shake his confusion off. 

“Are you okay?” Valo asked in confusion after seeing Dean acting a bit off suddenly. Maybe Valo is Dean’s soulmate because he shares some characteristics with Sam. Dean nodded. Or maybe Valo wasn’t his soul mate at all. There wasn’t really a way for him to know, right now. 

“I just have a headache,” he muttered. It was clear on Valo’s face that the man doubted the truthfulness of Dean’s excuse, but decided to give Dean a moment by quietly eating his sandwich.

A few hours and breaks later, after having fallen asleep in one of the classes, Dean woke up when the bell rang again. He waited, a bit fuzzy from sleeping all afternoon, until the next group came in, but instead, Valo took his bag and put on his coat. 

“Let's go, Dean!” he said loudly so that Dean could hear him in the back of the class.

Dean walked up to Valo. “Why didn’t you wake me up earlier? A man from the inspection shouldn’t be sleeping in your class, Valo.”

“You looked like you could use the sleep,” Valo shrugged. 

When Dean walked out the classroom, Valo stood in this room for another minute to silently say goodbye to what had been his working place for a few years. He jumped a little bit when he suddenly heard his phone ring. 

Dean listened as Valo talked to his sister on the phone and he understood what Sam was talking about: this Indigo really got a talent for mixing languages. When Valo hung up, he told Dean that his sister, Tarja, finally arrived at his house.

Valo’s sister, Tarja, was a very kind and happy lady. It was clear that the calmness was a characteristic that all the Watsons shared. The lady with long, dark curls and big brown eyes hugged her brother when Dean and Valo walked in. When she asked who Dean was, with a little wink, Valo answered that Dean was one of the undercover soldiers who came to pick him up. Tarja greeted Dean by giving him a hand and a bright smile. Then she turned back to Valo and went with her fingers through his hair.

“The longer hair suits you, isoveli.” Her Finish accent was more noticeable than Valo’s accent, but it made her sound more charming. 

“Valo, who’s that?” Dean turned around to the old lady, who was sitting in her sofa, when she asked that question, knowing that he never properly introduced himself. And Cas had asked him to be kind to her, so he put on a fake smile. But the grandmother wasn't pointing at him,, but at Tarja, whose face turned white. 

“Mummo, that's Tarja, my little sister, you remember her, right?” he answered calmly with a kind smile. 

“Oh,”the old woman looked a bit concerned while staring at Tarja, but then she suddenly smiled.

“Of course I remember her! Come here child, give mummo a kiss!” Tarja smiled, but in her eyes, Dean could read sadness. After she gave her grandma a kiss, the old lady asked another question. 

“And where’s my oldest grandchild?”

Dean heard Valo whispering an ‘Oh no…’ behind him. The Indigo didn’t have the chance to give an answer before his sister. 

“Hunter is dead, mummo…don’t you remember?” Tarja answered calmly. But the grandmother stared at Tarja in shock.  
In reaction, a tear escaped almost immediately. 

“How?” she whispered. 

“Well,” Tarja was, again, quicker than Valo.“She threw herself in front-”

“TARJA!”

“…of a train?” Tarja jumped as her brother shouted at her, but she accidentally finished her sentence. The grandmother started crying like it was the first time she heard that awful news.  
Dean wanted to leave, he felt like an intruder in this moment. He shouldn’t be there, he shouldn’t share that horrible moment. But he couldn’t leave, so he decided to give the family some space by walking to the kitchen and sitting down by the small table. 

Did he feel sorry for the Indigo? No…that couldn’t be, it just felt awkward to hear all the family drama. He didn’t need to hear that shit. He heard how Valo distracted his grandmother by not answering her questions and only talking about what was on the tv. After a while, the grandmother stopped asking questions and started speaking about these useless things too. She already forgot the conversation.

Valo took his sister apart, close enough to the kitchen so that Dean could hear everything. The older brother explained to his little sister that she had to be more careful with her words, and if she said something shockingly, she had to distract her grandmother like he did. 

He finished with “-I only want her to be happy, she shouldn’t mourn about Dad or Hunter again and again… . Let her live in her dreamy world.”

Tarja, still shaking a little bit (which Dean could hear in her voice) promised her brother that she would do that.


	6. Castiel

Tarja helped Valo pack his stuff and the next morning, way too early, the two brothers, the Indigo and the Angel drove to the airport in.

Since Sam booked the tickets only three days in advance, the four guys weren’t sitting next to each other on the plane and were split in pairs. Dean was sitting at the window-side again, next to Castiel. Sam was sitting next to Valo some seats further in the middle row. 

Hours ago, when Sam and Castiel came to pick up Valo and Dean, Sam had asked Dean, while Valo was still upstairs, if he wanted to sit next to Valo to get to know him better. Because it was Dean’s soulmate they were looking for after all.   
Dean declined and Sam, as usual, stayed calm and understanding. Castiel guessed that Sam knew his brother good enough to know why Dean didn’t want to sit next to the Indigo.

 

This time, Castiel had bought some chewing gum for Dean in advance. He knew Dean would forget to buy it himself and he remembered Sam giving some gum to Dean on the previous flight. When the plane started to take off, Castiel saw Dean flinching a bit. Upon seeing that, he took the chewing gum out of the pocket of his trenchcoat and gave it to Dean. 

“Sam told me last time that this helps,” the Angel said. Dean nodded and stuffed his mouth with the chewing gum. Castiel wanted to lighten Dean's mood.“You know, we only have to fly three hours this time.”

“Praise the lord,” Dean grunted sarcastically. Castiel just choses to ignore his tone – and his blasphemy, for that matter.

Castiel knew that Dean wouldn’t talk much, so he started to push some buttons on the television screen that hung in front of him. The Angel didn’t know what to watch so he tried to think about what Charlie liked to put on. She once called her favorite movies ‘classics’, so Castiel decided to start with those. 

Dean surely noticed Castiel scratching his head, trying to find something to watch. After a few minutes, he even shooed Castiel’s hand away and started searching a movie instead. A few clicks later, Castiel heard the intro music from Star Wars. 

“It’s a classic,” Dean, who immediately stared trough the window again,told him. 

Once the title on the screen started scrolling up, Castiel frowned.  
“But Dean, this says episode four? Shouldn’t I start at one?” he asked. Dean once again turned his head to look at him with a frown.  
“Dude, you wanted a classic. The Phantom menace is not a classic, and neither are episode two and three. They don’t even come close.”  
Castiel gave him a long look, and then reached back out to the screen.  
“I want to start from the beginning,” he said resolutely. He ignored the eye-roll coming from Dean.

“That little kid, Anakin, he's a smart and talented youngster…” the Angel said when he paused the movie. Dean shrugged.

“I’ve seen the movies, Cas,” he said distractedly. He was focused on his screen, so Castiel peered to the side to check at what Dean was watching. Apparently, he found out how to follow the course of the plane on his screen. 

“Dean, I have to ask something,” Castiel started carefully. When Dean didn’t react, the Angel just went on with his question. “Are you afraid of Valo?”

Dean frowned, but he didn’t look up. For a moment, Castiel thought he wouldn’t answer. But then Dean mumbled “No.”

“Then why don’t you want to sit next to him?”

“Because I don’t trust him.” Castiel had to think about that for a second.

“So?”

Dean finally looked at Castiel. “He could be a coldblooded killer, Cas!” he grunted. Castiel looked his friend in the eyes and saw a flash of an emotion he suddenly recognized. For an outsider, it must’ve looked like the two were doing a staring competition. Dean was already used to the angel’s glancing and staring and knew it meant that he was thinking about something. 

Finally, Castiel decided to be honest. 

“I think you’re afraid of yourself.” Dean cocked his eyebrow and chewed on the inside of his cheek. “You're afraid that you’ll do something to him without a good reason, just to hurt him. You’re afraid that he's innocent, Dean. Oh and you’re also afraid that you're going to like him.”

Dean looked confused and apparently decided to not react and just started to stare at his screen again. And some time later, when Cas resumed watching the rest of the movie, he heard Dean quietly mumble.

“I’d be better off sitting next to Sam.”

“No, you wouldn't. He would say the same thing I did,” Castiel countered while watching how another drone got slammed by a lightsaber.

“Yeah, but I can kill him in his sleep. You, on the other hand, aren’t that easy,” Dean mumbled sarcastically. Castiel chose not to bring up the Angel Blade he knew was under Dean’s possession.

 

“Athens!” Sam said happily when they walked out of the airport. 

“Yeah,” Valo sighed happily.“Is there any chance we’re going to make a trip to the Parthenon?”

Castiel wouldn’t mind it, it had been ages since he had seen the Parthenon, literally. Well, it actually had been ages since he had been in Greece, and he immediately noticed many changes from what he remembered. Things looked so… concrete. Maybe it had been more ages than he had thought.

The Angel was so startled to see cars driving through Athens, that he accidentally bumped into Dean who looked at Castiel like he was expecting the Angel to say something. So, Castiel acted like he meant to get Dean’s attention to ask a question. 

“So, did Sam arrange conveyance?” Dean nodded and at the same moment, Castiel heard Sam, who was walking ahead, yell at them. He had found their rental car. The older Winchester mumbled some wishes about the car not being a Polo again.

“An old Clio, really, Sam?!” In the end, Dean still complained. 

After some small arguing it was decided that Sam was to drive the car since Dean was too pigheaded to get behind the wheel. They had to search for a little while, but eventually they found a motel for the one night they would stay in Athens. It was something before noon, so the guys decided to find something to eat and just wander around a bit in Athens. 

Well, Castiel already knew where they would wander to. Valo and Sam would do anything to see the Parthenon. So,two hours later and a climb later, they were standing in front of the old, cultural place of interest.

Valo was unstoppable. He ran around the Parthenon like an overexcited dog. He also couldn’t stop throwing facts around like “Did you know that the Persians once destroyed this beautiful temple, I think that happened around…hm..500 BC,” and “It was once made into a church and later rebuild to a mosque after the Turks conquered the land. But the Turkish had the smart idea to stock their munition in the temple while they were fighting against the Venetians and the Venetians had the even better idea to bomb the temple. So, after that the Parthenon was half-destroyed, again! That’s why it doesn’t have a roof, you know,” and of course “There were once a lot of statues in and around the temple, but if you want to see some of them, you have to head back to England, to the British museum, because some rich Lord once took them with him to England. You see, this temple has been trough a lot, it has been treated horrible through many era’s.”

It kind of sounded like he was talking about a person instead of a building, but Castiel liked the respect Valo had for the old culture. And while Valo kept walking around, Sam and Castiel tried to follow him.

After a while, when Valo stopped rattling and was standing still, staring happily to the building, Sam noticed that Dean didn’t follow them. Sam already looked a little bit panicked, so they walked around the temple again to see if Dean was falling behind somewhere. 

They found him on the right side of the temple, sitting on the stone stairs next to the building, just staring at the columns and spying on some typical tourists with flowery, bright, matching shirts on. 

When he saw Sam, Castiel and Valo waiting for him, he stood up and walked towards them. Noticing that Dean was very quiet, the Angel quickly looked behind him to watch Dean’s face and read utter frustration and annoyance. The Winchester’s eyes stood dark and his eyebrows were knot together. 

At the exact moment Castiel wanted to ask Dean what was going on, Dean suddenly looked confused, then surprised and then furious. He turned around. And as he did that, Castiel was able to see Dean’s problem as well. 

 

Dean was staring into the eyes of a man with sunglasses and a cap on his head, who was holding Dean’s wallet. A pickpocket. The thief didn’t see Dean's reflexes coming, so he looked startled for half a second. When he turned to run, Dean already grabbed him by his shoulder. He started pushing the thief toward a column as Valo yelled “Not against the Parthenon, Dean!”

Dean quickly used his feet while holding the man’s shoulder, to press him against the ground. The thief fell on his back and looked panicked. 

“Look man, here’s your wallet, p-p-please don’t hurt me!” the man stuttered desperately. Dean took his wallet and put it back in his pocket. The thief looked a bit relieved, thinking Dean would let him go now, but Castiel knew better. So did Sam, who yelled at Dean…but it was too late. With a firm fist, Dean started stomping on the thief’s face, and with every hit, he made sure the next one was even harder. Blood was spatting on the groundand his eyes were watching the man he was hitting like he was some sort of prey, not a person. 

“Dean!” Sam grunted. When Valo started walking towards Dean, Castiel stopped him with one hand.

“It’s not safe, he won’t spare you,” Castiel warned him, but Valo kept going forward.

“He can’t hurt me,” he answered. That sure didn’t sound soothing at all. Castiel shot a glance at Sam, whose face and body had the same expression as his: ready to help or attack, but they were both waiting to see what would happen. Valo stood behind Dean and called him, but Dean was too far gone to notice. So Valo calmly grabbed Dean’s shoulder, a move that made Castiel take a step forward.   
Dean was startled and stopped slamming the thief to the ground. He turned his head slowly and looked Valo right in the eyes. Valo stared back, emotionless. Valo didn’t even look surprised when Dean grabbed the Indigo’s arm and jumped up, ready to fight Valo.

It took Valo some effort to dodge Dean’s moves, he got to endure a few hits. The mark made Dean almost unbeatable.

“If you still have…some decency….in that head of yours…you would stop fighting…next to this…sacred building…” Valo puffed while dodging and ducking. But a few minutes later, Valo finally got the message: Dean needed more than just dodging and talking to stop. Every second of this fight, Castiel was ready to jump in, but somehow, he was curious to see how Valo would handle this. Sam made a hand gesture to Castiel to make clear that he was also still waiting for the right moment to jump in. Castiel was wondering how long Valo would let Dean bedevil him.

It took only a few more hits for Valo to change his approach. Castiel immediately saw a change in Valo’s behavior and posture. He suddenly looked more powerful, more certain. This sudden change in appearance made him look bigger than Dean.

When Valo quick and efficient grabbed Dean’s hair and pulled his head back to look him in the eyes, Castiel started running. The Indigo suddenly showing his powers forced the Angel to make a sprint. 

Although, Castiel didn’t know who he would have to save if these two would have started fighting. His knowledge about Indigo’s wasn’t that rich, so he had no clue who would win or lose when the powers of the Mark of Cain and an Indigo Child went up against each other. 

In the corner of his eyes, Castiel saw Sam running towards the fight too. And when they got closer, almost close enough to touch Dean or Valo, they were thrown back with a shock. Landing on his back, Castiel realized that the Indigo must be able to make some sort of invisible force shield.

“IS DEAN LOCKED UP WITH AN INDIGO?!” he heard Sam yelling. While standing up, Castiel tried to think of a way to shut the shield down. 

“An Indigo is apparently able to guard himself,it seems,” Castiel answered. 

“Can’t you do anything about it?” Sam asked. Castiel tried to get closer, step by step, to be able to sense the shield. The mix of different kinds and sources of magic, almost made the force feel like a total new way of magic, like magic and powers from a creature that doesn't exist. But Castiel held on to it and sensed some sort of pattern in the magic the Indigo used to hold up the shield, woven into each other with very much care and detail. 

“I can take down some of it, but there are many parts of this shield that I cannot handle with my Grace like this!” Castiel yelled at Sam who was standing a little bit back, so that he wouldn’t be thrown back by the shield again.

They were lucky, because they were in Greece on a moment almost no one was on holiday, so there were only a few tourists giving them strange looks. The scene must’ve looked weird for them. Two guys acting weird and aggressive, a literally bloody thief running away on the background and another dude making Doctor Strange-like signs with his hands. 

While Cas was working on the shield, he could hear and see everything that was happening in the shield. Sam was staring at it too. 

“Don’t ignore my words and just stop fighting, Winchester,”He said firm, with a tone where you don’t want to argue with while pulling Dean back by his hair. Dean kept struggling and tried to hit Valo some more, but the Indigo was too quick now and saw everything coming. The more Dean fought, the more power Valo gained, it seemed. At some point, right before Castiel had unraveled some parts of the shield, he saw something strange happening inside of it, that made Castiel even working faster. He called for Sam to come and watch it too. 

Cas and Sam saw how Valo's eyes changed. His right eye started turning blue, so his whole eyeball was suddenly shining bright blue light, so bright that it was hard to look at for humans. But his right eye turned completely black, which looked utterly creepy and unnatural. 

“There you see the proof that the guy really is an Indigo, Sam. The eye of an Angel, the eye of a Demon and the body of a human.”

Dean finally, but probably by accident, locked his eyes into Valo’s. The aggression on his face made place for surprise and just one second later he looked a bit freaked out, but stayed calm. 

“But we don’t know if Valo is more demon, angel or human! We can’t guess what his next move will be!” Sam yelled, a bit angry from the stress. 

“We wouldn’t be able to guess his move even if we knew what the head source of his powers would be. He’s still an Indigo and still has the three kinds of instinctsto rely on. We don’t know what the Indigo’s do or how they work Sam! We don’t know anything about them or their powers!” Castiel yelled back while he was working away the last piece of shield where he could lay his hands on.   
He was so focused he forgot to check on Dean and Valo a last time before he ran through the shield, but by running through he felt like his energy got drained and he fell back on the ground like a bag of useless potatoes. 

He looked up to see if he lost the fight and one of the two got killed, but apparently Valo already had gotten out of Indigo-mode even before Cas walked trough the shield. Valo was just standing there, calmly, watching how Dean helped Cas to get up. And as soon as Castiel was standing again, he felt the shield completely disappear.

Sam came standing next to Cas and Dean and the three of them were staring at Valo, not knowing what to do or say. Dean seemed to be a little bit in shock, because normally he would be the first to say something. 

“Well?” Valo asked, almost sounding like he was ready to face the music.

“Well,” Sam said a bit nervously while taking a small step forward. “I don’t know if we should lock you up now or not?” Sam at least stayed honest. Valo nodded, and it was Cas who came to good sense first. 

“Let’s leave this place, people are staring at us.”


	7. Chapter 7

Dean still felt a bit off after the encounter with the Indigo. His strange eyes did something to Dean; they made him feel empty. He had no more energy to be angry or aggressive and he didn’t care about anything anymore. It was a different kind of empty than he had with the Mark, but it wore off every minute of course, although he wasn’t able to shake that feeling off for a few hours.

Returned to the motel, Sam still didn’t know if they had to be even more careful and less trusting or not, and Dean simply didn’t care for a while so Sam started asking Valo some questions.

“What did you do to Dean?” Sam asked. Valo sat down on a chair, just like Sam. Dean sat in a sofa and Cas was testing the buttons of the fauteuil. Valo shrugged.

“Nothing really, I mean, you can see he isn’thurt, right?” Sam quickly glanced at Dean.

“Yeah, but you did….something to him. He acts like a bag of potatoes.”  
Cas looked up after that comparison, frowning and staring at Sam like the Winchester spoke in riddles. 

Yup, Castiel didn’t get why Sam called Dean a bag of potatoes. Dean could’ve explained the comparison to the Angel, but he simply didn’t care and Sam didn’t notice Cas’s confusion. Dean saw that Cas decided to let it go when Valo answered. 

“He looked me in the eyes, I didn’t have to use any more power than that. My-eh-other eyes have that effect on people, you know.” Valo shrugged once more. “Eh, at least he calmed down, I don’t like to use my powers either.”

“Why did you make a shield then, if you meant no harm?” Cas asked. Dean looked at Cas questioning. There was a shield? Dean only had noticed Valo’s weird eyes. 

“Well, that…just happened,” Valo answered while his hand went through his hair. “The shield is kind of a habit, I’m not used to using my powers without the need to protect myself.”

Castiel nodded. When Sam wanted to ask Valo his next question, the man held his hand up to silent the Winchester. Dean saw Sam cocking his eyebrow. 

“But, Castiel, I didn’t expect you to be able to break those pieces down so easily. I mean, you must be a very skilled angel.”

Sam was the only one who looked surprised by the fact that Valo knew that Cas was an Angel. Dean simply wasn’t really feeling anything and Cas was being Cas. He probably saw it coming one way or another.

“How did you notice?” Sam asked Valo in a mumble, who was smiling a bit smugly. Not out of arrogance, but more like a teacher who was talking to an involved and curious student.   
“Well, I can see his wings, you know. And they are so huge, it’s almost impossible for me to not notice them,” Valo said, pointing at the empty space behind Cas where Sam sees absolutely nothing but air. This time Cas looked a bit surprised, turning his head to the side as if to check if his wings are actually there.

“They don’t really look so well, though,” Valo went on, scratching his stubbled chin while he was thinking. 

“So, you saw my wings the first time we met and you weren’t surprised or confused or anything?” Castiel asked suspiciously. 

“But how, I mean, when…you met an angel-?“ Sam started, but he was quickly interrupted by Dean suddenly jumping up from his place at the couch. He could’ve sworn that he saw something moving outside through the window behind Sam. Sam stared at his brother in wide eyes and then followed his brother’s gaze. 

 

Dean was already opening the door, as quick as he was. As soon as he lowered the handle, he saw something quickly moving in the bushes. If Dean wasn’t so focused, the effect of Valo had worn off, he would’ve never have noticed the slight movements in there. Thanks to the Mark he lost all kinds of strategy as soon as he felt threatened and so he immediately ran to the plants like a wild animal in search for his prey. But the prey saw him coming and was quick too, probably even quicker. 

Dean saw someone sprinting out of the bushes and he ran after the person. He’d rather die than let the man get away, he thought while he felt his heartbeat quicken. He got closer and closer to the man and when Dean caught the man’s black hood and pulled him back, his heart felt like it was going to jump out of his body. 

He immediately knocked the man against the ground, and his fist was already raised to start landing a punch when he noticed the man wasn’t in fact a man, but rather… a woman? After he blinked out of confusion, he saw it wasn’t even a woman, but a girl. A teenager with long, black, wavy hair and bright blue eyes. Dean stared at her in disbelief. Did he just turn into such a cruel creature that his brain didn’t even notice that he was chasing a young girl?

She had been wearing headphones, but Dean knocked them off when he slammed the girl against the ground. He heard a melancholic sounding song and could unravel just one sentence that immediately was planted in his brains.  
’…Don’t try to fight the storm, you'll tumble overboard….’ It sounded like even the song tried to tell him to die, or give in, surrender.

When Sam arrived, he pulled his older brother away from the girl and checked her wounds. She kindly smiled at him.

“Don’t worry, sir. I’m a Vampire anyways, I don’t hurt that quickly,” she said calmly.

“What?!” Dean barked at her, he suddenly felt sick. These mood swings didn’t really feel good. Right after feeling bitter for chasing a young girl, his mind immediately went back to the ‘kill it kill it kill it’ mode. 

“Would you please allow us to check that, miss?” Castiel asked. He was standing next to Sam, who was kneeling next to the girl. Sam pushed her upper lip upwards after she consented. 

“Yup, those teeth can’t be mistaken, alright,” Sam muttered in confirmation. After wiping his hands on his pants he stood up and helped the girl to get back on her feet. 

In the meantime, Dean’s head was going crazy. Why was she there? Why didn’t she attack them? Why was she acting normal? Why did she run away? Was she sent to get their attention? Or was she sent to take away their attention? Who’d need them to stop concentrating? Dean inhaled sharply before he snapped.

“WHERE IS VALO?!” he shouted out, not being able to believe these two idiots would just leave the Indigo alone in the motel room.

“Right behind you,” Valo said calmly. Dean jumped and turned around. The Indigo raised his eyebrows and walked passed Dean to take a look at the Vampire. 

“Well, they told me that these creatures existed, but I’ve never had the chance to really see one,” Valo said in fascination, circling around the Vampire girl as if she was some artwork in a museum. Dean wanted to ask who Valo meant when he spoke about them, and how the hell he knew how angel wings look like, or how he wasn’t baffled about that?

But Sam went on with asking question to the Vampire, what, indeed seemed to be more important at that moment. Dean felt lucky that Sam was still focused, because his head was complete shit and Cas had been permanently glancing, the way only Cas can do, at Valo. This seemed to make Valo feel a little uncomfortable, Dean noticed when he saw Valo scratch his head and arms a little bit more than his used to before the wings-conversation. 

“What are you doing here? Were you trying to hunt us?” Sam asked her, watching her as she wiped away the dust from her clothes. Dean bet she wanted to eat the guys, but a little voice in his brains whispered to him that a teenage vampire wouldn’t try to hunt three guys on her own. 

Dean started flashing around with his eyes, a bit paranoid. Maybe there was someone behind that bush or maybe behind that tree. It wouldn’t have been the first time Vampires would use a teenage girl to get what they want; Alex was the living proof of that.

“Dude, how dumb would I have be to try to hunt a bunch of hunters?” the girl asked, unimpressed. 

“I don’t know, how do you know we are hunters?” Dean responded bitterly while staring at a, what seemed to him, suspective parked car.

“Well, my boss told me, so I was prepared. Besides, you knocked me down very quickly so…you know, every vampire with half a brain would notice that you’re hunters.”

When Dean finally realized that the car wasn’t going to explode in a thousand flaming metallic shards, he came to stand next to his brother and stared the vampire in the eyes.   
“That still doesn’t explain what you were doing. Who are you working for? Give us clear answers!” Dean growled. The skin of his fist saw yellow, ready to punch. Because teenage girl or not, monsters were just monsters in his dictionary.

The girl seemed to understand that she couldn’t keep on playing with the elder Winchester much longer.   
“Look man, I don’t eat human, that’s gross. The whole group only eats animals and we're constantly hunting on different places to make sure that the people won’t notice it too much.”

“So, you were spying on us… why?” Sam asked calmly.

“My boss asked me to keep an eye on you guys, you know…she wanted to get to know your intentions and motives to be in Greece so she’d know if she’d have to be worried.”  
So this Vampire has a female boss, something like the leader of a pack? Dean got even more paranoid. He jumped away.

“How long have you been watching us?”

The Vampire shook her head. “I don't think I should tell you guys anything.” The girl chewed her lip for a second while she was thinking. “She’ll probably explain everything to you guys… If you want to meet her?”

Sam turned around to look at Dean, who scratched his head. Meeting a queen of Vampires didn’t seem to be the best plan ever, but this girl made him curious. And after all, he’d have Sam and Cas by his side, so if they’d have to they’d be able to get rid of the Vamps. They might be American hunters, but Greek Vampires are still Vampires, and this girl’s story sounded way too interesting to ignore. 

When Dean nodded, Sam asked “Where do we meet her?”

The teenage Vampire started explaining without hesitation.   
“So, you go to Olympia and when you get there, you just get your asses to the first Olympic arena. She always hangs around there, it’s kind of her business place, I guess. But you can only go by day. She goes home at six and nobody needs to know where she lives. Please let me go now!’ she didn't sound afraid, just more cranky. Dean then looked down to realize he had been clutching to her wrist to keep her from running off.

“Why would we do that, if we can just rid the world of one more vamp?” Dean said with a horrible looking smile. That didn’t scare her off either. 

“Oh, come on! Jerks!” She cursed. Cas came standing next to Dean and stared at the Vampire, but was talking to the elder Winchester. 

“Why would we kill her? She didn’t harm anyone… and she doesn’t consume human flesh. What kind of threat is she to us that we MUST get her blood on our hands?”  
Dean shook his head bitterly.

“Cas, she isn't human.”

“Neither am I,” Cas answered. “Nor Valo, yet we didn’t jam a knife through his neck.”

Valo jumped in on the conversation. “And I would strongly appreciate if you didn’t. And if I have to believe you guys, I must be a freak of nature.”

“You are!” Dean snapped loudly. 

“Then why am I still alive?” Valo raised his eyebrow. 

“Guys, that doesn’t matter! Stop wasting time with needless conversations. We are not going to kill Valo, unless he does something extremely wrong and we are not going to kill this girl under the same condition!” Sam settled this, he obviously felt a little bit annoyed. Then Dean heard him sigh. Sam was probably just worrying about Dean again, but what was there to worry? Dean really felt like shutting the Vampire down would be the most logical thing to do. Why didn’t anyone agree with him? 

Fine, whatever… . Dean took a few steps back, releasing her wrist and watching how the girl rubbed her skin now that she was freed.

“Wait!” Dean yelled when the girl was about to turn around to run away. “What's your name? So we can come after you when we discover that everything you told us is a lie!” She turned her eyes and Dean could read her thoughts from her over-sarcastic face: Oh. My. God.

“Beyoncé, you paranoid freak!” she snapped. Dean heard Castiel mumble in the background. 

“That’s doesn’t sound true,” he muttered, frowning once more and looking as if he wasn’t really sure how to feel about it. Dean ignored the naïve Angel.

“Please, tell us your name?” Sam asked and showed her that he was serious about this too. 

“Fine, fine! My name is Echo,” she admitted after a long staring match. When the guys stared some more at her, not sure if they should believe her, she sighed.  
“Look, I must’ve been a very loud baby. Can I go now?”

Sam decided to believe her, so he nodded. Echo waved shortly at them before turning around. On the road, she went right and disappeared in the darkness.

 

“Are we really taking him with us!?” Dean asked, not able to believe it. When he got up the next morning, he had found Valo, packing his bags too. 

“What do you want us to do, leave him here on his own?” Sam tried to talk some sense into his older brother, but Dean was hardheaded, as usual. 

“Someone should stay here with him!”

“Sure, be my guest Dean!” Sam countered in a sudden wave of anger, clenching his teeth and startling Dean. “One more time: we are NOT hunting the Indigo Children! We are asking them for help, and it’s been a wonder that Valo kept putting up with your shit. You’ve been acting like a little child, unthankful for the sacrifice this man has made for you. If you keep behaving like this, we will never find the other two and we will never find your soulmate. And if we find them, they would never even want to help an arrogant ass like you!”

Valo kept packing his stuff, obviously feeling a bit uncomfortable next to the two arguing brothers. 

“Now, you’re going to stop being such a spoiled brat and start showing respect to the people who are here to help you,” Sam finished his rant, and slammed the door behind him. He probably went for a walk and left Dean with a heavy head. He felt Valo staring at him and went to get a beer without looking at the Indigo.  
Sam was right, Sam was so damn right, but Dean had a hard time being softer. His body felt permanently tense.

 

“This place is beautiful,” Cas mumbled when they arrived at the ancient Olympic stadium. It was a ruin with grass growing everywhere and remaining stones of what must have been walls, still laying in low rows, marking the path like they used to do when they were great walls. Dean was following his brother when he noticed Valo going somewhere else. 

The hunter decided to stay with the Indigo to show Valo that he wasn’t totally repulsive to him. Valo didn’t say anything and that totally didn’t bother Dean. It gave Dean the chance to get used to the Indigo, to calm his nerves so he wouldn’t say anything stupid. Valo found a still-remaining tunnel to walk through and felt the need to touch it before actually looking or walking through it. Dean, however, noticed someone walking around on the other side of it. 

He poked Valo, who jumped slightly. “Go get Sam and Cas,” he whispered.

“You’re going to that woman alone, aren’t you? Who knows what she is-?” But Dean was already walking inside the tunnel. Then he turned around while walking backwards for a few seconds.  
“Yeah, well, I’ll see, won’t I?” On the other side of the tunnel, Dean saw a long stroke of gravel, surrounded by grass. The woman was walking around on the gravel, talking to her phone. She noticed Dean and finished her conversation. The woman had brown eyes and black curled hair, knotted together in a forties hairstyle. She was wearing a vintage sleeve, tube dress and was wearing red lipstick. She looked his age. When she had put her phone away, she started walking towards Dean.

She smiled widely at him.

“Well, well, the famous Dean Winchester, standing in front of me,” she said, sounding like the had the time of her life. Dean didn’t let her beauty distract him.

“Yeah, sure. Who are you and why are you following us?” he asked, and right after that Cas, Sam an Valo joined him at last. They had been running, Dean could hear them breathe heavily. The woman looked to the other guys and Dean could clearly see joy in her eyes by the look of his company. 

“An Angel – well, what’s left of him anyway – two hunters and an Indigo. What a special clan do we have here?”

Valo stared at her strangely and took a few steps back. 

“But who are you?” Sam asked this time, taking the word from Dean with his eternal calm. She already knew the kind of company the guys were, their race, their names. She must be powerful and have a lot of spies. 

“You… are you an Indigo?” Valo whispered in the background. The other guys turned to him. Dean read confusion on Valo’s face, which was turning white. 

“Yeah, I didn’t suspect that meeting another one would make me feel heavy and sick too, but they said that that feeling goes away the longer we stay in each other’s company.” The woman gave him a big smile, though nobody knew if it was sincere or not.

“You guys can feel each other?” Cas asked curiously. Valo nodded and let himself fall on his knees, the woman had to sit down for a moment too. ”Wait, there are only three Indigo’s in the world and only one of them lives in Greece. So you must be-“ 

“Eryn Mundis, it’s a pleasure to meet you all! I brought you guys here because I just couldn’t figure out why you were hunting the Indigo Children. My family has been signaling you guys to me since you landed in England, but they never found out any reasons. So you know, I thought that I probably should figure it out myself.”

So she had been stalking them during their whole journey. This made Dean feel very paranoid again, he started walking in circles.   
This was a whole other way of finding the Indigo, because this time, she tracked them down. 

“Please don’t pass out,” she said worryingly to Valo. The other Indigo laid himself on his back. 

“How long will we feel this way?” he asked.

“Just a few hours, normally. We need to adjust to each other’s energy. But please-“ she coughed heavily, after that her voice sounded worn “-Tell me why you are here.”

Sam looked at Dean, who nodded, and started talking. He told her everything, about the Mark and its consequences if they don’t remove it, the psychics and the soul mate part.

“We hope finding the Indigos will help the psychics to define Dean’s soulmate, or maybe he will define it himself, we don’t really know how this works.”

Eryn nodded. “I see, but it’s hard to leave my business, my family unguarded.” She bit her lip “Unless…he, but wait a minute. Why would I bother about this?” she asked with a sarcastic smile

“Because finding Dean’s soul mate gives us the chance to prevent more murders,” Sam explained it like he had explained it to Valo. “So-“

“No, they don’t know how the soul mate will be able to help them, so they even might need to kill one of us,” Valo interrupted Sam. She nodded and let her head rest on her knees. She was quiet and sat there for a moment. 

“We deserve to be dead,” she suddenly stated. Dean wanted to ask what she was talking about, but Castiel was quicker with another question. 

 

“Who are the they you both talk about? Who taught you what you are?” Valo got back up and stared at Eryn, they didn’t say a thing for a moment. Then Valo started talking. 

“A few years ago, I got really depressed because I couldn’t figure out what I was. I didn’t understand my actions. Why did I kill people without being able to control it? It felt like something whispered to me in such a way I could not resist or fight.”

Dean looked shocked. Did he just say that he is a heartless killer? Valo went on.

“So at a certain point, I collected all the drugs, meds and alcohol that I could find and took it all in at the same time.”

“You tried to kill yourself?” Sam asked in clarification. Valo nodded. 

“You would’ve done it too, you know, if you suddenly have the blood of some kind of criminal in your hands and you weren’t able to stop yourself. Being an Indigo is ironic, because you become a criminal, a psycho, from cleansing the world from all what’s bad, from the faults in the behavior of humanity itself. But I didn’t understand it back then, I just thought I was a heartless killer… But yes, I was finally dead, I felt like I finally did something good, until I met the reaper that should come and get me. 

“I was so interested in her powers, her cleanness of working, no blood involved, that I started asking her questions. She taught me a lot, about what I was and how I could make killing less gruesome. By the time she had to go, she admitted it wasn’t my time to go yet so she revived me. But my depression wasn’t over so quickly, so I saw her a total of four times. And every time she told me that it wasn’t time yet, but every time she taught me so much about applying this angelic magic to my power, made of three kinds of magic as you guys know. The last time I saw her, she explained to me that I had more angelic powers in me than the other two Indigo’s. Knowing that I could fulfill my task without spilling blood or making my victims feel pain, gave me such a boost that I never saw her again.”

“So you are telling me that once you see a victim, you can’t help yourself?” Dean asked. That must've been freaking weird, to get out of some kind of trance, suddenly seeing what you have done. Oh wait, it did feel strange, he’s been through it before, after all. 

“I don't expect you to understand, Dean. And this probably won’t make you respect me more.”

Dean cleared his throat and mumbled, “Well, actually I do know what that feels like.” Dean looked at his hands, once covered in so much blood, feeling the need to hold the familiarity of the First Blade in his palm. He tried to ignore the staring faces of the others. They knew what he meant. And suddenly he got a flashback to his adventure with the twin-psychics. He had seen someone pull a soul out of someone else, out of a rapist…the soul-taker must have been Valo. His actions had been painless, worn and calm, coordinated. Exactly as Dean would imagine how Valo would take care of someone.

Sam cleared his throat. “But if he is more angel, then what are you?” he asked Eryn.


	8. Sam

When Eryn wanted to answer, Sam suddenly felt his phone buzz in the pocket of his pants. He jumped up and walked away, mumbling his apologies. Once he read the name on his phone, he quickly answered it. 

“Hello, Charlie?”

“Hi, Sam! How are you guys doing?” her cheery voice asked. Sam smiled and scratched his head.

“Well, we already found two Indigos,” he revealed, but he wasn’t really sure if the second one wanted to leave her creepy Vampire-family-clan to help Dean. 

“That’s great news!” Charlie called out. 

“Yeah, so, did you just call for an update? Or…I mean you sure have the right to call, you can always call and-“

“Yeah, yeah Sam, I kinda called because of the loneliness and the silence in this ginormous bunker. Oh, and I decoded some stuff from The Book Of The Damned by using some of Rowena’s notes.” She said it like she had done the dishes, as if decoding that stuff wasn’t hard at all.

“Wow, okay…what did you find?” Sam could hear Charlie ruffle trough some pages.

“Sooo…It’s not much, but I found out that the soulmate should be able to take the Mark over from him with some kind of complicated spell.” Crap.

“Okay, but then the Soulmate has the Mark and we still don’t get permanently rid of it,” Sam stated, remembering how Dean had explained that Cain had simply passed it on, as well.

Suddenly Charlie sounded dead serious. “Hmm, well, I can almost assure you that getting rid of that thing permanently will carry some kind of dark consequence. I didn’t fully translate that part yet so I don’t know how we'll be able to do that, but there’s only one word that I managed to translatealready and it seems to be important because I see it coming back in almost all of the sentences.” 

“What word is that?” Sam had a bad feeling about it.

“Dark,” Charlie revealed. The hunter sighed and rubbed in his eyes while trying to shake that bad feeling off. When he finished the conversation, he turned around to walk back to the others and saw Eryn, standing in the grass, a bit further from Dean, Cas and Valo, talking to Echo and two, Sam guessed, other Vampires. The three guys were sitting on the gravel, keeping an eye on Eryn.

“What happened? Did she tell what kind of Indigo she is?” Cas shook his head.

“No, at the same moment as you started calling, Echo walked in with her two companions. They needed Eryn to discuss something,” the Angel explained.

“News from Charlie?” Dean asked, getting straight to business. Sam nodded and without hesitation he started explaining everything that Charlie had told him. 

When Eryn walked back to the guys, they could hear her yell: “Don’t forget anyone. You have their addresses and missions!”

“What’s happening?” Valo asked curiously. 

“I’m having a meeting, I assigned Echo to come to me because you guys didn’t seem like a threat, so she didn’t have to guard me anymore.” Sam hadn’t even noticed that someone was guarding Eryn…Echo must have had a great hiding place. 

“What kind of meeting?” Castiel asked, curiously but also cautiously. 

“Well, Castiel, this situation needs to be discussed with my family, right? I can’t just leave them!”

Dean scratched his chin. “But are you planning on helping us?” he asked roughly.

“I am, but I need to be sure that my family can survive without me,” Eryn revealed. Dean nodded and Sam could see in his brother’s eyes that he wasn’t looking forward to be part of a big meeting with a whole clan of Vampires, even if their diet is human-free. Sam knew that he needed to keep an eye on Dean when the clan was coming together, so his eyes made contact with Cas’. The Angel nodded, so he understood that he needed to guard Dean too. 

One hour and a half later the piece of stadium beyond the tunnel, where the guys met Eryn, was filled with about thirty Vampires. They showed up from all dark corners of the dawn. Dean acted as if he was relaxed, but even Valo noticed the Winchester’s nervousness.

“Calm down,” he whispered to Dean. Sam’s elder brother looked at Valo, he hadn't even noticed his own tense behavior, and tried to act better as if he was calm.

Eryn started talking and while she was speaking, she looked like the most relaxed and playful person ever. At the same time, she still sounded like a leader. With her straight back, loud voice and confident movements, she proved she had everything under control. Did Sam dream that the woman only a few hours ago said that she’d deserve to die?

“Dear friends and family! You must be asking yourself why I organized such a big meeting? Well, yesterday we, and with we I mean our dear Echo, discovered American hunters in Greece and she followed them and lead them to me. You know who these hunters were? Ladies and gentlemen, may I present you: THE WINCHESTERS!” She laughed loudly while she made big hand gestures to the two brothers. The Vampires held their breath. 

Sam noticed that they didn't really share Eryn's cheer, after all, they were still monsters in the same room with hunters. 

“Now, these four pretty faces asked me to join them on a mission. A mission that would stop a whole lot of killings!” She took Dean’s hand and pulled him more to the front. Dean was smart and calm enough to follow her.

“Now,” she said while stroking Dean’s jawline, Sam just kept watching with his mouth a bit open from surprise. “What do you guys think?” she asked her clan without pulling her hand away from Dean. Dean glared at her dangerously, but that only made her smile wider. It somehow gave Sam the feeling that this woman could be extremely powered and fearless. 

Someone took a step forward to talk. It was a bald man with a muscular body. “Will you return?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”Eryn answered honestly. When the next person, a woman, took a step forward, Dean tried to go a bit backwards with anyone noticing it. The woman asked her question.

“Who will lead us?” when Eryn took Dean’s hand, quick and silent, no clan-member noticed. 

“I’ll announce that as soon as we are sure of my departure. Who thinks this mission isn’t strong enough for me to leave?” While some hands were raising and the Vampires were whispering to each other to discuss the subject, Eryn turned to Dean and whispered in his ear. When she was done, Dean looked a bit grumpy and nodded. Eryn let his hand go and Dean stayed by her side the rest of the meeting. Sam was curious what she told him…

“I count…thirteen votes for me to stay. This is the minority, so I’m sorry, my dear family, but I’ll be going with the Winchesters. I honestly think you made the right decision.” She scraped her throat. “I decided to make two next leaders, being my own blood and the eldest Vampire. My nephew, who, we all know, is like a brother to me and the Vampire who looks like a teenager, but is hundreds years older than the most of us. Alec and Echo, come to me!”

Sam looked shockingly at Echo. She was hundreds years old?! How was that even possible? But then again, he had learned by now not to ask too many questions. 

When Alec came closer, Sam noticed that he was a Vampire too. It made the Winchester think about what could’ve happened to Eryn’s family…but as far as he knew, they could still be living… or not… . Eryn gave a little speech and took goodbye of the clan she cared for, for many years. 

“I know, for sure, that these two people will be as good leaders as I was. Alec and Echo, do you guys promise to only do what is right and correct and to do no unnecessary harm, to make sure the whole family stays bound by this rule?”

Alec nodded and spoke softly: “Promise.”   
Echo yelled loud and clear: “I promise!”

“Please, never hesitate to call me when in need. I hope this isn’t farewell, so I say goodbye!” Eryn kissed the cheeks of Echo and Alec, to say goodbye. The other Vampire walked to the front, towards Eryn, to say goodbye, hug her and kiss her cheeks. 

This time, Eryn let Dean escape to Sam, Cas and Valo. Castiel immediately asked Dean what Eryn had whispered in his ear. 

“She said that I was the mascot of the whole meeting,” he mumbled bitterly.

“Why?” Sam asked curiously. How did she manage to let Dean stay like a well-trained dog?

“She told me that even vegetarian Vampires like to stare at a good looking piece of meat. She needed me to look pretty and to be adored. Vampires apparently happen to be extremely sexually active.”  
For a second, Sam just stared at his brother, then he started laughing. Dean looked with a sour face at the guy making fun of him. 

“That sounds like a nice compliment,” Castiel said innocently. Valo grinned widely, but his grin suddenly faded when he felt Eryn pulling his arm this time. She pulled him to the clan of Vampires. It was his turn to look pretty and this time, the Vampires were a whole lot closer than they were with Dean. 

‘Save me’ Valo mouthed. This time Dean laughed his ass off, as if Valo was his friend. Maybe they’ll get to be friends, after some time, Sam thought. Valo was someone who was able to stay calm, well, calmer than Dean. Like me, Sam thought. Maybe that was exactly what Dean needed in a soulmate.

Or maybe Valo wasn’t Deans soulmate at all.

“Let’s leave now, while the clan isn’t noticing it,” Eryn said a few hours later when she walked back to the guys to release Valo. The Vampires were drinking and talking to each other. Sam understood her, she doesn’t want a too dramatic goodbye.

“I’ll go home to pack my stuff. When do you think the next plane flies to Belgium?”

“Well, Greece and Belgium are pretty close to each other, so probably tomorrow. I’ll check it and I'll let you kn-“

Suddenly Sam heard gunshots from everywhere. Everything suddenly went to slow motion. Sam looked behind him and saw the Vampires falling down and blood flying around. He saw a lot of fire and smelled the stink of burning flesh. Sam’s brain managed to muffle the screams to the background.

Sam felt someone pulling his arm, it was Dean to get Sam out of his trance. Dean signed to Valo and Valo started running, followed by Castiel, who made sure the Indigo wouldn’t get shot. When Sam tried to make Eryn move, she just kept staring at the bloodbath in front of her, so he just lifted her from the ground and threw her over his shoulder and sprinted. 

Eryn wrestled herself loose again and when she looked at Sam, he could see her left eye was bright blue and her right eye was unnatural black, like Valo’s eyes were when he had argued with Dean next to the Parthenon. Sam knew that he mustn’t stare at her eyes for too long. When Eryn turned and ran to the fight, Sam yelled at her, but she didn’t look back. Sam turned his head and saw the others disappear through the tunnel. 

Sam couldn’t leave Eryn to die so he ran into the smoke too. He tried to stay low and searched for the Indigo. 

“Oh, you must be Eryn,” Sam heard someone say with a strong British accent on his voice. He tried to figure out which way he had to go and found, after tumbling over some bodies, Eryn standing in front of a man in some sort of suit?! From somewhere under the skirt, she grabbed a pretty long knife (witch was kind of impressive to hide under a skirt). Hadn’t Dean said that he saw someone get killed by a knife in one of the visions he had during his reading with the psychic-grannies? 

Sam didn’t get the time to think about it. The British guy in the suit was talking to the phone, totally not impressed by Eryn.

“We found one Indigo, mister Davies,” He put the phone away and looked at the Indigo. Then he took his gun and said:“Please put the knife away, miss.”

When she started sprinting towards him, he shot at her hand, seemingly missing on purpose so she would drop her knife. Sam stayed down and searched his pockets. Shit, he didn’t have a gun with him! Eryn smirked and stared at the man. The man apparently got some sort of memo because he didn’t look her in the eyes.

She kept staring at him. Would her eyes make him feel emotionally empty too, or? Suddenly Eryn noticed Sam, she blinked a few times and went back to staring at the man.

Sam had a plan. It was the least waterproof plan ever, but he had one.

He silently crawled to the back of the man. He heard the sound of a helicopter coming closer. The man laughed.

“The British Men of Letters wants to thank you for your cooperation, miss Eryn,” the guy said, and as the words were spoken Sam jumped on his back. He knocked the guy to his knees and held his face towards Eryn, but before she had the chance to come closer and look him in the eyes, he quickly turned back to Sam, fought through the Winchester’s grip. Then, Sam heard a bang and suddenly felt a deep pain in his shoulder. There was a wound pounding while he was quickly loosing blood. His eyesight went blurry while he was struggling with this British Man of Letters.

Out of the blue, another pair of hands held the British guy too. Sam blinked and tried to see who was helping him. The British man got pounded in the face by someone strong and extremely angry. Sam looked at the face of his helper; Dean. The Brit lost his gun and because of Dean’s strength, he looked Eryn right in her eyes. 

Her blue eye started to glow more and more until the light was too bright, while her black eye started crying black tears. She came closer, the man started to scream as if she was torturing him. He tried to close his eyes, but he was stuck, he couldn’t let go of her eyes anymore. The Brit kept screaming and even started to gargle and made weird noises out of pain. He tried to scratch Deans arms to break free, but Dean didn’t even loosen his grip when he started to bleed. 

When the man stopped moving, Dean let go of him. For a second, Sam wasn't sure if Dean would keep on using his fists against the lifeless body in blind rage because of the Mark. It almost seemed like Dean was going to do that. Until he blinked and shook his head. 

Then he ran to Eryn, grabbed her hand and hurried to Sam. Dean grabbed his brother’s side to help him balance and started running. When Sam was going to fall or go unconscious, Dean dragged Sam further while mumbling to Sam to hold on and to not give up.

The sound of the helicopter was getting louder and louder when they finally ran through the tunnel and to the car where Valo and Cas were stressfully waiting. Dean helped his brother to sit down in the car, the elder Winchester was shaking, but tried to look calm for his hurt little brother.

Sam quickly glanced at Eryn’s eyes and saw they were back to normal.

So Eryn didn’t make shields with her powers.

No.

She could torture people by just looking at them.

Then everything went black.


	9. Chapter 9

Dean was driving to nowhere and the fact that his three passengers were as clueless as he was drove him crazy. That and he just saw a freak torture someone with her eyes. 

“I can-“ Castiel started to say, but he got interrupted by Eryn, who yelled: “We need to go back and look for survivors! I can’t leave them like that!”

“WE NEED TO GO TO A HOSPITAL, ARE YOU ALL NUTS?!” Valo barked in agitation. He was clearly feeling better, less sick, around the other Indigo.

Dean jumped at Valo’s words, he didn’t hear Castiel who was trying to say something.This was the first time that Valo didn’t talk calculated or in full control. Dean’s eyes shifted to Sam's lifeless body next to him. He totally didn’t know what to do. His panic almost reached its max levels, he felt his heartbeat raising and felt clouds getting into his mind. Thinking clearly got more and more difficult to Dean.   
The elder brother was driving through a totally unknown country, with Sam heavily hurt.

“British Men of Letters? Is that even a thing? And what were they hunting?” he asked, maybe then he’d be able to make a decision. 

“This guy called someone and told that person that he found an Indigo… so I guess they are looking for me and him,” Eryn answered, nodding towards Valo.

“Great, and the two of you are seated in my backseat,” Dean grumbled, eyes resting once again on Sam as he pushed the acceleration-pedal some more.

“Okay, maybe we should head back to Olympia and after that we could go to my place. They'll never find us there!”

Dean frowned and shook his head. “What we need to do is make sure my little brother is treated. Besides, have you ever been in contact with hunters that were really trying to hunt you down? That’s surely the first place they’ll look.”

“Oh, yeah, seven times I think,” Eryn sighed.

“That’s a lot, hunters tried to chase me for only three times,” Valo noted with a shrug, answering Dean’s thoughts when he had met Valo for the first time. 

“Well, the Men of letters are way better with paperwork, so I know for sure that they'll have your address, Eryn. I just thought they were all… extinct…”

“Sam and Dean are legacies from the American Men of Letters because their great-granddad was one of them,” Cas explained quickly but in an angry tone to Valo and Eryn. He sounded impatient. It made freak-eh- Eryn raise her eyebrows. 

“What’s wrong, Cas?” Dean asked his friend. Next to his hurt brother, he really didn’t need a pissed-off Angel. Cas sighed.

“Had you ever let me finish my sentence, I would’ve healed Sam minutes ago! Pull over.” Castiel sounded agitated, if not angry. After that, Dean heard him mumble something under his breath that sounded pretty much like “Pssht, humans…”

Dean was confused, how did he not think about that? With his left hand, he let go of the steering wheel, to touch the Mark on his right arm. He wanted to scratch it, cut it, but he knew nothing would work.

Dean saw that there were only valleys filled with orange trees. He was driving in the middle of nowhere. Without saying a word, he pulled over, stepped out of his car and even before Castiel got out of the vehicle, he already lifted Sam out of the car and supported his brothers body. Then he sat down, Sam next to him, facing one of the valleys, and still got supported by Dean. 

Cas squatted in front of Sam and did what he had to do as Dean was watching the orange trees. He saw a piece of rock, forming some sort of balcony towards the top edge of the stones that looked like big, high walls around the trees. On that one balcony-ish piece of rock grew one, single orange tree. How did it even get there? It was all rock, no dirt or something. Some of its roots were even growing trough the rock, so Dean could see them moving with the wind under the balcony. 

With a grunt, Sam woke up. Dean stopped supporting Sam and looked grateful and ashamed at his friend. Cas nodded, he understood; Dean hadn't been himself. Sam rubbed his eyes and touched his shoulder on the spot where he had been shot. It still surprised the both of them what the angel was capable of.

Sam thanked Cas with a smile and a friendly tap on the angel’s arm. Then he looked around and said: “What a beautiful place to see when you wake up.”

Dean gave Sam a moment to watch the valleys peacefully and signed him after that to get in the car.

“We have a problem,” Dean said as soon as Sam slammed the door shut. “We assume that the British men of letters are after the Indigo Children.” 

“So I didn’t imagine that?” Sam wondered out loud. Dean saw Sam’s forehead wrinkle as he was thinking about their situation. “Then we should keep moving. The only chance we’ve got is if we’re faster than them. We need to go to Belgium, right now.”

Dean nodded and started the car. 

“I just don’t know where we are,” he muttered. Behind him, Cas let out another sigh.

“Don’t worry, boys I’ve got a GPS on my cellphone,” Eryn said while she tried to smile, but it looked forced.

“We could use that, or I could just, I don’t know, tell you where to go?”

Okay, now Dean felt stupid. When he knew what direction he had to drive, he saw Sam turning himself around to talk to Eryn. Good, Dean thought, because he wouldn’t have known what to say to the girl. What do you say to someone whose friends and family, all of them, just got murdered? He actually didn’t even care about it, they were only some Vampires.   
So, yup, Dean was glad Sam wanted to do the talking stuff. Dean would only have made her cry. 

“How are you doing?” he heard Sam ask her.

“I tried to call Echo and Alec when you were outside… no-one answers the phone,” she answered sadly. Sam nodded. 

“I just wanted to go back to give them a proper last resting place, you know?”

“Well, that wouldn’t have been necessary, because the Men of Letters were already burning their bodies,” Dean muttered, earning him an angry look coming from Sam for speaking without considering Eryn’s feelings. Oh, right, Dean forgot to shut up. He pressed his lips together and stared at the road.

During the ride to the airport, Sam had explained to Eryn that going back would only end in more deaths. He told her that she had to be strong and show her powers, look forward and avenge her friends on a smart way by not endangering herself instead of chasing herself into her own death. Otherwise their death would be even more useless. And all that other spiritual crap. Dean started to feel annoyed again by his brothers preaches. 

When they finally arrived at the airport, Valo went to ask when the next plane to Belgium would fly and if there were still some seats available. 

“So, the next plane to Belgium leaves in nine hours… I’ve got us all tickets, but we will be spread over the plane because we ordered them so late.” So they had to wait nine hours in the freaking airport. Awesome. At least they could hide in plain sight from the men of letters.

Because Dean didn’t feel like doing anything productive, he just observed his fellowship. Sam was reading a travel book while holding a map of Belgium next to it. Dean saw how his brother silently and unknowingly mouthed the words while he was reading. Valo was teaching Cas how to play cards. When Dean’s eyes crossed Eryn’s, she looked ten years older, but then she immediately threw him a little smile. She stood up after yawning and stretching her legs. 

“I’m gonna grab something to eat, you guys need anything?” Her Greek accent made her r's roll. Sam looked up and asked her, with his kindest smile of course, for a salad. Valo kept playing cards with Cas and asked her for a simple sandwich. Cas just shook his head and because Dean felt like he had to, he proposed to go with her. That way he was at least doing something instead of sitting and staring at his friends. 

While he was walking next to Eryn, he was thinking about what she expected him to say to her. Was he supposed to comfort her. He didn't really feel like doing that. That was Sam's job. Oh, and he still didn’t feel comfortable about that torture-session of hers. It made him think about the monsters he used to hunt; wasn’t she one of them? 

“I’ll say it so that you know, but I won’t be hugging you or say sweet things to make you feel better or anything,” Dean muttered. Eryn just shrugged as she walked forward. 

“I really didn’t expect you to do that,” she said. “And I’m actually glad you won’t. I’m not made of sugar, honey.” She threw him her playful smile, but there were no lights in her eyes. It was her act, and Dean understood that. This way she could make herself believe that she was okay and make sure that nobody would treat her like a broken doll. 

Dean saw her hand move while she was talking. 

“What do you have there?” he asked. Eryn looked a little bit startled. 

“Oh, uh, this?” She held her hand up to show it to Dean. It was some sort of… necklace? It had big, wooden, beads. She was just playing around a bit with it, unknowingly. “It’s a Kombolói, which means worry beads. I kind of took it from the pastor who raised me.”

Well, it sure looked a lot like a rosary then, a simple one, with dark brown beads. 

“So it’s something religious?”

“Well, you guys call it a … uh…rosary. In most countries, it is a symbol of the Catholic religion, but in Greece…not per se. You see, we just use it to fiddle with, to relax. Many men actually use it while hanging around in a… how do you guys call it? A bar? Café?”

“So you stole it from a pastor?” Dean smiled. This woman must have a lot of guts to steal from a pastor, one who raised her too. Somehow, he forgot his thoughts about her being a monster. 

“Well, I don’t feel guilty. It was a terrible man, unlike the other pastors who I knew… They were all so kind to me, but just the man who had to adopt me, had to be a complete piece of filth. He was a disgrace, not worthy to even enter a church.” Her voice or face didn’t change at all, like she had peace with her story. 

“What did he do?” Dean asked a bit curious. 

“Well… he killed in the name of the church. He buried all of his victims in his own yard, forced me to grow flowers on their graves so that nobody would notice something was buried there. He murdered people he called ‘sinners’. At least, that’s what they said in de documentary!” Eryn added that last part quickly when the employee Dean was ordering Sam's salad to, was staring shockingly at Eryn. They then walked further. This Indigo had a totally different history than Valo. But they both have had a lot of horror in their past. Who could be Dean’s soulmate? Where did she match with him? Did a soulmate have to match in some sort of way?

“What happened to him?” Dean asked after a while, pulling Eryn from her thoughts. She blinked a few times and then answered.

“I killed him.”

So she was a murderer. Well, Dean knew all Indigo's were, but how did she manage to kill the person that raised her? Dean felt his heart itch. Did he really feel sorry for her? He had to disgust her, he knew the Indigo's must be some kind of monsters, freaks of nature. But he had seen her fight that night. He had seen how Sam protected her and she protected Sam, he had seen how they had worked together. But her way of fighting, with her eyes, had been very creepy and unnatural. Dean wanted to hate her, but why couldn’t he? That would have been more simple than feeling this opposite thoughts, knotting together, making his head pound. But he needed more, he wanted more information. 

“How old were you?” he asked.

“Fifteen,” she answered. Dean felt like he had to puke. 

“What did you do?” he whispered. 

“I cut him down… then I ran away. I ran until my legs refused to work. I changed my identity and my birthdate so that I was old enough to live alone. For years my name has been Valkery, I was young, wanted a special name, but everyone called me Valery. And when I was sure everyone forgot about Eryn, I changed my name back.”

For a moment, it was silent between the both of them. Then Eryn whispered, like she was talking to herself:“He found me in that small church, as a baby. A church as small as a chapel, that had never been renovated, so pure it was.   
“The frescoes were still untouched, original and I was just laying underneath them. A little church, surrounded by fields of orange trees, in the middle of nowhere. But he had found me. My parents probably couldn’t or didn’t want to raise me, so they left me for God. As if God himself would’ve been able to raise me.” She sounded bitter and confused.

She was hurt and she felt pain, in a way Dean recognized. Surely, he didn’t kill his own father, but he had done terrible things too.

Then he started to think. She cut him down, a fifteen years old girl cut a grownup down. 

“How did you do it?”

She wasn’t surprised by his question. “It was the first time I felt the calling of being an Indigo. And as soon as we get such a calling, we can’t ignore it. It takes over our body, like we're under hypnosis. So suddenly I had a knife, and while he was asleep I walked up to him. I only needed to stab him five times, I somehow knew where to stab him to kill him. For an untrained girl, five times is nothing. But after they trained me, I started to learn how to only stab once to take someone down. Plus, they taught me to use my eyes if I really wanted to hurt someone badly without a weapon.”

She stabbed the guy; she must be the other Indigo, the one who stabbed the mother down like Dean had seen in the vision. 

“They? You always talk about ‘they’, who are ‘they’?” Eryn sighed. 

“Well actually it’s a him.” Dean felt that she was hesitating, she was going to say something that he didn’t want to hear. She scraped her throat. “His name was Luca, he was a demon and my heart was extremely weak for him. Still actually, but I haven’t seen him in ages.” Oh lord, she had been trained by a demon.

She was the more demonic Indigo… .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was based on the song ‘Oh sleeper-The Family Ruin’ 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
